Pioneer Square Vignette № 3.

While walking Friedrich, Will and I saw a woman in distress fall in a crosswalk and stopped to help her. Monday April 11, 2022.

I’ve never been in the 7-Eleven at the corner of First and Cherry, but there are always people milling outside of it: talking, exchanging, arguing, smoking, laughing, yelling. Wheeling, dealing. Coming, going, loafing, waiting.

That night, the light from the door spilled across the sidewalk onto the dark street, forming a backlit halo around a Black woman’s head as she lifted it from the asphalt, dangerously close to the wheels of a Subaru. Feet shuffled and cars passed on First where she lay in the cross walk, chest down, head up, crying like a baby who was trying desperately to crawl but couldn’t.

The 7-Eleven at First and Cherry. Pioneer Square, Seattle. April 18, 2022.

“Hep me! Hep me!” She slurred her words, her eyes wide like a spooked horse’s.

I ran into the cross walk to help her, motioning for the car to stop. The guy we’d passed earlier on our evening walk took…