Zapotec Crossers (or, Haiku I Write Post-PTSD Nightmares) by Alan Pelaez Lopez

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When we got to Chambers Street, we would be the first ones off the train and would skip every other step up. We would speed-walk down the block, checking the time impatiently when stopped by a red light and then jaywalking when the coast was clear.

We would part ways at Borough of Manhattan Community College, where he turned off while I hustled on to my high school nearby. We shared this routine for years, not exchanging a word or a nod even as we experienced the same frenzied commute.

There's only one high school that this person could have attended with the described commute, and that's Stuy. I don't get why people do this, but they do it all the time. Was there some schoolwide lecture that I missed where they reminded us all to always use the bridge rather than taking our lives into our hands crossing the street, and to speak to somebody if we were thinking of suicide, and to never flash our money around, and oh, to never tell anybody where we attended high school? I remember the first three, maybe I zoned out and didn't hear the rest of it?

At least this person didn't gratuitously toss the word "elite" in there.