text: I saw the whole thing. I work in a cramped gas station kiosk for a department store chain. The wall-to-wall front window overlooks Freddy Gonzalez street. On that street, I shared in Snowden's secret for the first time. Only on this day, there was no elegant prose, no moral learned, no imagination at play. Only grim reality. It was a muggy Saturday evening in Texas not far from the Mexican border. The air was damp and hot, encouraging me to stay within the walls of my air conditioned box with the radio on. My favorite song by Pink Floyd was playing on the radio: "Wish You Were Here". The sky remained grey and heavy between the episodes of violent rain. The blue Nissan Xterra appeared in my left peripheral. It always did. The vehicle crept forward to the stop sign, idled a moment, and turned right onto the street, unaware of the fate to which its harbored passengers would succumb. A beautiful young girl sat in the rear passenger seat. Her dark brown hair went past her shoulders and shined with a vibrancy challenged only by the radiance of her skin. She faced out the passenger side window - her cell phone was in her hands. She sat facing that way for a reason only she and I knew. The vehicle was still moving slowly, the driver taking extra caution on the wet road. The girl looked up and caught me staring. I tried to look away, but I was transfixed. She was my Beatrice; she was my salvation. That's when it happened. In my right peripheral, a second exit opens onto the same street. It is much closer to my kiosk than the exit on my left. I heard later that the driver was drunk; the driver was asleep; the driver had a heart attack. It didn't matter. She was looking at me, and she smiled with those lips that became fuller and more beautiful by the day-much in the same way that Beatrice's beauty increased for Dante as they drew closer and closer to the center of Eden, to the Good itself. My lips began to form a smile back, one that would always pale in comparison to the ones brought forth by those lips that sustained my life. That's when it happened. The truck collided directly into the rear passenger door. I hadn't noticed how fast it was going until I witnessed the magnitude of the impact. I saw the whole thing. When the ambulances and police cars arrived, only two of the occupants were of importance. The young boy in the car was the only one moving. The mother was unconscious at the front wheel. The boy was removed first. He was hysterical. One eye struggled to remain open in a swollen pool of black. From the other sprang tears. As a waterfall crashes into the pool of water below it with a grand and indifferent force, so did his tears cascade onto the puddles of water that littered the road. Blood painted his upper lip a dark crimsom. The heart wrenching sight of him was diminished only by the most painful and broken wailing I have ever heard in my twenty-one years. He didn't want to be pulled from the backseat. Where his strength failed him in the struggle to free himself of the paramedics, his eyes succeeded in maintaining an unbreakable grip on his mother and sister. The mother was removed second. She offered no resistance. Her airbag had been deployed. Her face was red and purple, a swirl of the two colors which appeared so mixed that one could not tell where they separated and joined. But something told me she would live. Before the onlookers had arrived at the scene, the EMTs had covered the girl's body. She was removed last. There was no rush. The crowd that had gathered there did not know what had happened to her. They craned their necks and squinted their eyes in a vain attempt at discovery. But I saw the whole thing. When the truck hit her door, she was still smiling at me, phone in her hands. It was bedazzled or bejeweled or whatever it was she called it. I always teased her that it was childish. But now, the glimmering plastic emeralds and rubies seemed more inappropriate than ever. Her eyes were brown, just like mine. In the next fraction of a second, which is still an inescapable eternity in my heart and mind, her forehead broke the glass. Only half of her phone was still visible. The precious plastic jewels had changed colors. The rubies were no longer shiny, but redder than I had ever seen. The green of the emeralds had morphed into wet peas in marinara sauce. A few glistening strands of cortex added the final ingredient. Her right right eye was shrouded in a gory fortress, taking refuge from the fatal scene. A hint of brown hid near the center of it, all of it's radiance and gleam wrung from it forevermore. The other half of the phone was buried in her left eye socket. Her smile was gone, replaced with lifeless, parted lips. They seemed poised to whisper something; perhaps an unwanted secret she had learned and had hardly the time to process. But her lips didn't have to move for me to hear it. It was the secret that Snowden had spilled while he went cold in the sun. It was a secret that I would never forget - not now. I saw the whole thing.