5th Street
After art history,
the widow drove me
to my slum studio.
Its only north-facing window
overlooked the vacant lot
where I saw a shootout my first night there.
Barely 30,
they hadn’t suspected
her husband’s bad heart.
Dying,
he had betrayed their now
backward-pointing future.
We hung there,
our hollow faces
reflecting the diagonal streetlight.
Kindness resembles love,
but I had to go to
my menial job.
She dropped me at the office,
where I discovered I was not on the schedule.
How could I make such a mistake?
I ran back into the parking lot
as her taillights disappeared into the night.
I walked back to my shamefaced studio in the dark.
Cutting through the vacant lot
where the shot man died next to his gun,
I decided to let it go.
-2013