The Uber Eats Driver Died at 15:00
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I saw only a small glimpse of you. You were hairy; tufts of hair stuck out from your blue uniform. I didn’t see much of your face before you hurtled down the small alleyway, on a bike that seemed like a thrown-together raft bouncin’ on hostile water. A large, plastic-encased box swayed along to every nervous bump on the road— your eyes were stuck to a phone, and I imagine that’s how it happened. I heard a few cars screech, metal-auf-metal; a desperate action to halt kilos of steel. I imagine that’s how it happened; or maybe you hit a pedestrian and hurtled yourself off the bridge. I try to imagine your thoughts at that last moment: I like to imagine you were not entirely faithless. I like to imagine your hands folded in prayer as your head collapsed into the remorseless asphalt.
“I saw it,” she said as she pulled a cigarette from a little red pack. “Now, you write this down. I saw it; it was all his fault. He was looking at his app and he was racing down the street and the street was covered in ice and he slid on the ice and he lost control and he slammed into that woman. It was all his fault.” She was frazzled; she poked with her finger at her eyeshadow.
“No. I saw it too,” he looked like a tree, his flowing hair waving in the winter frost. “A car hit him. You know Berlin is full of animals; everyone here is an eco-fascist lusting for death. If they could kill every single foreigner on the street, they would. The only thing stopping them is the material conditions. Have you read Marx?” He folded his arms in a gesture of protest.
“Digga,” he said as he parked his taxi on the stoop. “It’s a gang thing. All these Bengalis, they have their own routes, their own neighborhoods where they decide who delivers where. You deliver on the wrong corner, digga, you’re dead. You didn’t hear it from me.” A few men stood by the door of the apartment building, smoking, nodding along. “Digga,” he said as he showed his phone to the others. “Look at what she sent me.”
“Come look,” she said to her little brother who was playing on the stairs. “Come look, fast;” she yelped as she stuck her head out, looking down on the street from the fourth floor. Her little brother came running back inside, and he needed her help to reach the window and peek his head. “Look,” she said, pointing at the red and yellow strewn across the pavement. “Wow,” the little brother said. “That’s the insides of a person,” she said. “Really?” He was skeptical. She let him fall back down on the floor, and he touched his own body; he touched his head, and wondered where his thoughts must be. “That’s what a person looks like if you break them open,” she said plainly. She watched quietly as the paramedics swept up what was left of his body.
“Po-tweet!” she said, perched above the street. “Po-tweet!” she ran down the branch, trying to chase down the teeny-tiny little worm trying to burrow itself into the wood. “Po-tweet!” she said as her beak severed the teeny-tiny little worm in half. “Po-tweet,” she said softly as the ambulance came howling down her street.
Okay, I admit it. I was thinking of you; even as I pressed the mop into murky, black suds. I confess a hundred times; not to you but to myself. I drop the mop onto the pavement: the color of blood as it fucks the dirt always unsettles me. I thought about the way you’d stare at me, silently and without strain, for a few agonizing minutes. And when I asked you if anything was wrong, you said “I’m good;” all in a hushed, little voice. In the intimate moments, you become so quiet that I worry your voice will be swallowed up by the ear-shattering buzzing that fills every atom of this universe with anxious, unceasing quivering. And we stand a little bit closer as the band begins to play.
Everyone is here— it’s a great party and we are here in togetherness. The firemen and the police officers share a few cigarettes, talk about their day. The ambulance people shake their head as they are gathering his belongings, strewn about the street as if the dearly departed had combusted. There’s a river of blood & soap running down the street, falling down the storm drains, and it is carrying him home piece by broken piece.
“—,” he said as he scurried down the pipe. “—,” he sez to her as they scurry together down the wall. “—,” she shouts with a terrible tremble. A few boots suddenly appear— they jump, they run out together into the terrible commotion. “—,” he shouts as the valley of giants starts to shake before him. “—,” she says as she steps over a few crumbs but now is not the time for that. “—,” he beckons her closer… they run under the ambulance, shielded from the hot lights. “—,” she asks him. His little whiskers shake; he opens his mouth, trying to make sense of the shadow play before him. “—,” she shouts and she grabs a piece of bread that falls from the policeman’s mouth.
“Hey, my head fucking hurts; I’m gonna step outside real quick for a smoke and,” and she didn’t say much else before stumbling out through the window. A storm of bile was pushing up her stomach, but she could keep it in even as she leaned up against the pole of a stoplight. The streets beneath her ran with rushing water like a wild creek, carrying cigarette butts and pieces of glass and tissues and plastic. A caravan of nervous stars ran from one end of the horizon to another, filling the little dark rooms of her mind with burning light. “Ah, jebat!” she kicks a few bottles into the street, and stumbles down one of the alleys; she bumps into a man and doesn’t apologize for her mind was occupied with matters of spirit and soul. She pulls out her phone and takes a selfie— she takes two more, less and less satisfied with the results. How vulgar, how ugly the streets look; unloved and slovenly. “Someone should clean this disgusting shit,” she yelps. She wonders if he thinks about her; she secretly hopes that he has tears in his face, that he whispers her name. She puts her phone back in her pocket.
“Are my fantasies stupid?” she asks the buildings around her. The cute five-story brick houses bend towards her, their windows locked in toothy smiles. “Is it stupid to be wanted? Is it weakness?” The buildings refuse to reply, and they look down upon her in judgement. “Suki,” she spits, trying to hit one of the buildings in its lit-up eyes.
As the wine wore off, her wanton bravery chilled and turned to her familiar anxiety. She rubbed her hands; she rubbed at the yellow bands ‘round her fingers where the cigarettes stain her skin. She pulled out her phone again and sauntered down the street, looking at old messages, at old pictures, at old videos; she felt as if she was eating the crumbs of her own crumbling past. “Am I stupid?” she whispered to herself as she crossed the street. “Am I just stupid and weak?” And she doesn’t say much more when the bike hits her and he goes flying over the handlebars.
And you’re lying on the street now, and there’s a lot of commotion around you. You feel thirsty, and the chill of the streets beneath you is painful to the skin. But your mouth is warm, and filled with sound. Look around you; everything is buzzing with life. You see their faces over you; “wie geht’s dir?” “Bleib ruhig!” You see their pain, their terror. The streetlights seem so terribly bright now. They ask for your name, and where you’re from.
“Where I’m from? I’m from where soaring green jungles touch a bloody-hot sky. I’m from where rain covers the stench of wet, revolving earth. And the hands feed you, and the summers are so hot that everything around you weeps. And there are dazzling yellow and orange lights, and the nights hum and we are all there together somehow.”
The stars of lights pass over your head, gently swaying in the breeze. The windows of the many buildings look down onto you, as you wander the night like a frigid ghost. And you felt this protection, of all-loving hands caressing you. The sky becomes alert with blue and red lights, dancing like flames.
“Hey,” you thought. A butterfly was soaring in the cloudy skies above you . Its wings were a brilliant azure; a hue so bright that you felt your eyes burn. “It’s like they used to be when I was a kid.” It’s exactly as you remember them. You smile; you didn’t forget.