Poetry
Woman to Woman

At the Old Colony Tap, she and I are having one of those uneasy talks that women have when no one else will listen. Her ex, who is my ex, is in jail pacing past bars until he is released
for the umpteenth time, while we inhale cigarette after cigarette over the subject of him, though I’m still trying to stub out my past that’s smoldering behind me.
Look, I say, quoting Kunitz, exhaling smoke from my fourth cig, there is this thing inside him that won’t stop chewing you, but there’s still time to run before you see what he’s done. I tell her this, but she’s too hopeful to hear. I heard what you did, she says. You called the cops after he broke into your house in the dark. She is like this: all hungry and hopeful. I am that woman who will always have patrol lights reflected in my eyes. Going back, I say, lighting up again; going back is like climbing into a burning building and saying, I know that the smoke alarms work. Her eyes,
the color of wheatgrass, gloss with tears as she says, Maybe this time, he won’t need to heat every room with rage. Maybe he can change temperatures to one that falls
below a hungered pitch that propels his fists. No. I say. You have to snuff him out for good. His smoke will choke every doorway. Brand places inside you that you can’t even see —
Honey, he’ll stain your brain with searing handprints ’til you’re half-insane. She protests: maybe this time it’s different. And I know it’s all hot air I’m huffing. I can do nothing to yank her from this hazy maze.
The bartender sets two more drinks before us. What if, she continues, stubbing out a butt, what if I go back, but I know where the fire escapes are? Sister, I think. I want to say so much —
But I inhale those words like a dragon in reverse. Sigh out one last warning. Dear girl, he will never let you go. Break a window or your bones: jump out of your skin if you need to; crawl your ass across
splintered glass. Steal a door for all I care. Just woman, please, leave while you can still breathe — before you’re surrounded by smog so deep you can’t even begin to see what you’ve become now that he’s done.