She Crossed the Street Slowly

She Crossed the Street Slowly

(“Do not fail to show love to strangers, for by doing this some have welcomed angels without realizing it.” Hebrews 13:2)

I thought I recognized her face as she crossed the
street against the stoplight. Her gaze was elsewhere,
maybe her
shoes,
maybe her lost hunger,
maybe her words that once
were summer bouquets set upon
the tables of the unknowing.

I think she was a singer. A songwriter.
A minstrel. Maybe she used to be the
darling of the worship scene where every word
is scrutinized, every miscue recorded in
reporter’s notebooks for posterity. Maybe she
was tired of the same four chords. Maybe she was
weary of factories of uplifted faces. I think she
was still a poet. But her audience wrote her a
resignation letter before
she ever got started.

I think she liked women. I think she wanted to fly.
I think she crossed the street slowly because every
eye had always been upon her. I think she was ready
to cry as soon as she reached the other side.

She had drunk the vintage of diluted wine.
She had held it all in. She had lied for too long.
And to honor her truth

She was ushered to the alley. She wore a “no vacancy” sign.
She was put on probation. She was given two years, or more,
time to outgrow her fanciful follies and stand
in the back of the line.

As she approached the curb I wondered, where would she
turn
from here? Her eyes were steely and blazing. Her hair
was limp. Her lips moved in ways only she could hear.
Her arms were tattoos of every promise she had kept.

She stepped up and waited, though the light had turned green.
She sat on the corner, picked up a cardboard sign. She pulled a
sandwich from her backpack, tore it in half and shared it with
the man whose words were scribbled like prayer.
And she gave him half. And she sang the words that
had bubbled from her pain. And she explained nothing.
She made motions with her hands. She hummed the
lilting melody that only the rejected can sing.

And she stayed the day with the man who did not ask her
for a thing.