Matteo Preabianca

What the Dashcam Saw

The light was yellow. Then it was red.
I was reaching for the coffee in the cup holder,

A text from my son
pinged—practice got out early, can you come?

The other driver’s name was Maria.
She was thirty-one. She taught kindergarten.
The hospital room a machine
that beeped the way a clock ticks
when you have nowhere else to be.

I told the officer I didn’t see her.
I also didn’t look.
There is a difference the law does not measure.

Months later, I still stop at green lights.
I check my mirrors seventeen times per mile.
My hands remember the wheel’s shape
but not what they were doing when the world
folded inward like a letter shoved into the wrong envelope.

The police report says no charges filed.

My pastor said God’s forgiveness is infinite.
But I am the one who reached for the coffee.
I am the one who heard the ping and thought
I can answer that at the next light.

There is no next light.
There is only the replay, the frame-by-frame:
hand lifting cup, eyes leaving road, the small
ordinary betrayal of attention
that stole a woman’s legs from the waist down.

She will never run again. Her students
will never see her chase a soccer ball
across the field at recess.
And I will never stand before a judge
because no law says you should have known better
in a way the courts can use.

But something in me has been court-martialed.
The jury is my own face in the bathroom mirror
at 3 a.m. The verdict: Guilty of failing
the duty of care. The sentence:
to live inside this body that keeps on living
while knowing what it did.

And so I have become a stranger to myself.
The man who used to believe that people
are mostly good—that man reached for his coffee.
He heard a ping.

Italian-born Australian Matteo Preabianca, now based in Scotland, is a linguist, lecturer, and translator whose work reflects his extensive travels across several countries. Fluent in Italian and English, he channels his dual cultural identity into a diverse portfolio that includes published English poems, experimental music albums, and novels.