"A Woman Walking on the Road."
We were in the car.
We were heading home when Christian,
with his wholly American name and manic chatter,
told his girlfriend the woman we saw
walking on the road with no umbrella
was a symbol of torment.
We were in the backseat.
You, with that face, making the windows and the Black world
beyond the windows beautiful, the roadside figure
of a woman in the rain beautiful.
And I knew later I'd be writing these lines, caught
in that space between personal and public--
a woman's torment, or symbol of it,
and our love, and God damn everybody's sins
scribbled here for show.
We were in the car heading home when Christian
said the woman on the road was probably
fresh from a fight with her husband.
But he didn't say his fists gave his last girlfriend bruises.
And I didn't say it either.
The woman walking on the road was walking on the shoulder
and meant something different and utterly
the same to each of us.
Her lit up life and husband left looking from a window,
as I have looked from a window, guilty.
But guilt ain't nobody's business.
We were in the car.
We saw a woman walking on the road.
There was a woman who, after our quarrels,
would steal my car, a little blue Datsun
with a dented fender.
She would drive from our dorm to the blank streets of the town
we lived in.
She'd drive past the empty classrooms, the soccer field,
to God knows where.
And I wanted her then away from me, two red lights,
a tired engine leaving smoke.
But one night, I groped in the darkness beneath my hood
until I disconnected something.
And if there is such a thing as malice, that was it,
a man sabotaging his own car so his lover couldn't run.
I'm shaking my head, because I want to say I am different now,
like Christian, someone with a new face beside him
and a pain no one can see, perhaps, settled in his chest.
Your new face beside me.
I am damaged.
I have bruised.
We fought over something stupid, and she came so close
I knew she could smell my blood.
Have I come far enough to say I hit her,
to say my hand left a cloud on her cheek?
Have I come far enough to say, I'm sorry?
We were in the car.
You, with that face, making the windows and the world
beyond the windows real, the figure of a woman on the road
telling the truth.
Once in my small brutal past, a woman left me, walked from my
lit up fingers to the street with a storm on her face.
It was raining.
I watched from the window and could not follow.
My car sat in the lot, disconnected,
unopened, unmoved.
So we can circle back to what's going on in that.