once, i heard that there was no future

only the past repeating itself again and again

this night, city fog rolls in and hides downtown

in its melted river and drunken pedestrians

night just opening the doors of bars to passersby

the edge of town is dark and the mist so thick that

the back of me gets buried by a wall of white

and the front sees the road trailing off to meet

a sky that no one can see.

these nights are few and far between.

the past has held its parties in evenings like these,

where it celebrates things that have already happened

and things that will surely happen again. it waits

around every corner, looking back two years and then

peering around the edge of that to see what's left

beyond. if the past is the future then it makes sense

that i can still be angry after all this time.

could you be satisfied with a woman who

you could look at but never touch? he was on the

couch, begging, then telling. she was on the couch, crying,

saying no. and his hands were all over her, the ball

was counting down the new year and he was violating

her with her false permission, her tears that told him

obviously she was no woman, she was a girl. and she

had still been girl, and then he decided he would like to do

more than yell and fight and look and he would like

to yell and fight and touch, and take and take.

the tendrils of fog are drawing the curtain

around the past, because surely that mistake, though

mistakes can happen more than once, will never happen

again. and i am a woman now, and my boy, he is a man,

with a shaved head and a warm heart and a body to

draw on in the mist, somewhere out there. and i think

the future holds the past, but i am ready for new

consequences and summer to burn away this winter sheet

and show me life again in all its secret, muted glory.