what I think about when I walk up Chestnut

The city’s full of desperate people, throwing their hands up in the air, talking to themselves, quiet mumbling and then a shouting explosion as they look back at a perceived wrong, an imaginary or remembered antagonist.

I think what if one of them had a knife, and as he walked by me he pushed it in my chest to the hilt. What if it didn’t hit my heart, but pushed me back to sit on pavement, leaning against the sandstone of the post office. I would hold my jacket around it, trying to keep my blood -- MY blood, the indignity of someone else laying claim to it -- from spilling. I imagine the assailant would run, the act random, not wanting to finish the job of killing me. Weakened, I'd try to keep the well-meaners (assuming any arrive to help) from removing the blade and hurting me more.

I think about shootings, a crazed kid with a gun in the quad, me hiding behind a metal trash can, trying to shelter myself. The kid coming up to me, leveling the gun at me, maybe he’s one of my students, or a former one. I act calm like I do in the classroom, even though my fingers are locked white on the metal slats of the can, the only reason I’m upright, and I ask the kid to spare me, leave me to document what’s happening, tell his story, make him matter.