The Mugger

Bloody,

I rise from the battered concrete,
my fists unclenched,
witnessing the mugger’s dilemma:

that even with their weapons
they are more frightened than I,
as I dust off futile strikes on spirit.

How does a mugger
reason in words they do not know?
That is no longer my concern.

I do not blame,
though I brace for the further clearing,
knowing what I have emptied within
preceded far more than a dozen fists.

But I stop,
recognizing now,
there is no amount of thought
that will grant the clarity
the mind craves for futures.

What’s done
was never yet to be.

And from this place,
I experience the street,
the slow Pennsylvania nights,
their monotony,
and the wisdom hiding
in the cracks of each nick in time.

Slowly, slowly, the page turns
to be sure I registered every word,
felt every feeling,
gathered the story
the way it wrote to be read.

So I let it be.

Unarmed,

I did not wake intending to be a symbol
in someone else’s story.

I woke hungry,
with time pressing its knee into my back,
hungry children in shrinking rooms,
and a name I could not afford to remember.

The street taught me
how to wear deep cuts for politicians,
to speak with my hands first,
to confuse fear with authority.

I carried metal
because my voice had never worked.
I mistook a hit for a lifetime,
and speed for choice.

When I saw you
I saw that same nick,
a pocket of maybe,
a way out of the hour.

But when you fell
and did not fold,
when your fists opened
instead of closing around me,
something in me lost its script.

I was ready for resistance,
for the old tale of blame and blood.
I was not ready
for someone already empty.

You looked past me
like I was late to my own life.

I do not remember striking you.
I remember the sound after,
when I found the courage to raise my chin
to a city pretending not to watch.

I ran,
back to my ways,
but with profits I couldn’t pawn.

Later,
alone with my hands,
I realized they were shaking
from the sudden knowledge
that I was unarmed long before tonight.

Somewhere,
you were learning how to stay.
Somewhere,
I was learning how to disappear.

The street kept both secrets.