buttoned up against fleeting desires

Her life before him 

was like being in a car that comes 

to a rolling stop, exactly like in the movies 

where the passenger is pushed out 

onto a deserted street late at night, 

the hour when everything settles into itself, 

and the houses, which are not nearby, 

are buttoned up against fleeting desires, 

head and lungs full of drink and smoke; 

it was like watching the car pull away 

without hesitation, belly-crawling 

off the road and into the brush, 

like falling into a deep well, 

the ground cold and wet and lovely 

to not be seen, the darkness overhead, 

a bird of prey, the nothing that gets out 

a comfort, the nothing that gets in 

a dream. It was like lying in the bushes 

until dawn, being woken by an animal 

in search of something primal, more basic 

than the need to stand and brush the dirt off, 

walk an unknown distance 

toward an equally unknown destination 

until a car stops, a window rolls down, 

a man leans over the passenger seat 

and says get in, the way it sometimes happens 

in the movies; it was like complying 

without knowing if these would be 

the last words ever heard, the last chance 

to dangle an arm out a window, 

cup a hand to catch the air, 

to ride in a car with the windows down 

and not have to speak, not have to explain 

to the man who stops and asks for nothing, 

his quiet kindness a rope, the last good man 

who picks her up, or the first. 

[Teresa Leo 'The Last Good Man', from Bloom in Reverse]