The Visit
I gave her some change, everything
I could dredge from the bottom of my purse,
to buy a cold drink at the college snack bar
the day of the open house for prospective
students. She took
the coins without
touching my palm and disappeared
down the long corridor, her loose pants
scooping the dust from the floor,
her sneakers scuffed almost bald
of their suede, and I thought This is how
she
will leave me a year from now—
my money loose in her fist, my breasts
on her father’s body, my tears locked
in her father’s eyes. When she returned,
she slammed the money down on the table
before me and said, What
the hell can I get
for
sixty-five cents?
She
walked off
in the direction of the car, turning
her baseball cap backwards, the way
she did as a child bent over a coloring book,
not wanting so much as a shadow to fall
between her and her intent. I should have done
what my mother did, I should have rubbed soap
into the carpet of her tongue, but I didn’t.
In silence I drove her all the way down
the
New York
Thruway, the Mass Pike,
91 South—her head flung back
on its hinges, her mouth ajar, sleeping
the way an infant sleeps when the evening’s
last feeding is over—so furious
and blessed was I to have her in my sight.
—from The Leaving: New & Selected Poems (2001) |
