The Streets

When he came back from the streets he said

that everyone had worn masks, the stores

had all been boarded up, and the cops had

their gear and their shields, so that everything

was muffled while also terrible, terrifying.

He saw a woman, an older white woman,

get shoved down and she stayed down, curled

up, until she was helped. Because I was sick

and couldn’t go there, I had the luxury

of seeing the woman as an image, a seashell

or an ampersand on the ground, though I didn’t

tell him this. He saw the tents people lived in

by the park get torched, and I could smell

on him what he had seen. There were people

with bullhorns you couldn’t really hear.

There was singing along with the chanting

of all the names of those who were murdered.

He said it didn’t matter what kind of day

it was but it was ironic that it was a beautiful

summer day, the sky a swimming pool.

He lost the two friends he had gone with.

Though they’d told each other to meet in front

of the public library if they got separated,

the crowd had gotten thick and angry there.

At the crowd’s edges were people selling

T-shirts, books, and water, like the commerce

that sprung up at the edges of battlefields.

But it wasn’t a war, he said, because he

could walk away from it and take the bus

back home. I thought of him looking like a boy,

looking out the window, the tilt of late sun

a hand smoothing a tablecloth. I thought

of the bus the way I thought of poems, that it

was a civic space and a lyric space at once.

I knew not to say any more about what

I was only imagining. He turned and went

to the other room, to wash his hands and face.