Leaving dinner, a friend reminds me I can slip
through a gap in the fence. Under the searchlight,
it seems too small, improbable, but I turn and twist
my animal self free. I cross the lot, still half fox,
and ignore the chiming map in favor of old habit.
The way home from my internship was left, right,
left again, uphill. This city remains part forest,
though the branches are bare now and less
obvious in the dark. Between brick walls
and trendy bustle, trees linger or encroach
like thoughts. I still sometimes feel like a girl
impersonating a woman—a trick of gender
rather than decade. A woman makes herself
available; a girl might dodge and weave
and not belong. Spinster is a less audible
destiny—a refusal to grow into anyone else,
a private mantle. With discrete markings,
we signal one another, says the podcaster,
like recluse species. I skip the freeway and travel
through layers of architecture. This city, too, is still
becoming itself, in an odd phase between holidays
and apocalypse; strings of light shine on worn-down
campaigns, new street art appears in brief flares.
A winter drizzle begins—so the road gleams
silver as I park and walk under my favorite hemlock.
When I pause to warn the magnolia against blooming
in this broken weather, the moon is cloud-covered
and the night, for now, silent.