Vanishing Hitchhiker

She’s a blur on a speedometer,
a sad swan of lace and make-up
masking bone with the grace of grave.

Her distress in prom dress drills your nerves
like a street lamp circuit
whining its handicap to the night.

Don’t stop, her request goes nowhere.
She wants you to stop. She waits
for your breaking moment of "Alas poor child!"

to skewer you with the dire truth of her mortality.
Don’t stop—
her little trick with door and portrait is cue

to bring you closer to the legacy of her accidental misery.
And isn’t that the point—
pin us to the berm and baptize us

in the morose of our own fated condition?
Don’t stop, it’s a given—
this roadside vision raises her thumb to us all.