one week of penance starts...NOW

Tequila shots and your phone number made
the 2am walk down Portage alone seem
like a really good idea.

I'm 24 hours into love with Winnipeg,
the anarchist bookstore and the bus driver
who drove me a block in the rain for free.

All evening I've been walking, circles
around you for confidence, bootheels
leaving small crescents of rain for
questions.

On the way back to the hostel,
there's a shadow of a man on the sidewalk.
We see eachother, one block and extra few feet
of height between us.


If I cross the street, will they scrub
the sharpie-scrawl of FEMINIST
from my knuckles, call me coward?


If I cross the street, I am being prejudiced.
If I cross the street, I am tomorrow's news headline.

Half a block away, he crouches
to look at something on the ground or take the
gun or switchblade my fear has handed him
from his shoe. My lungs clutch
and stall.

Tomorrow's headline: Dyke Ignores Intuition
to Avoid Racial Profiling, Stabbed.

As I take my first shallow
step off the curb into the road, he stands. I set
my jaw square.

Eyes wary on eachother
in the light of a police cruiser,
we both cross the street.

At home, I recant the shame of crossing the street
to avoid a man. How he, too, passed me.
How I thought I had dismantled this part of my
brain so long ago.

He was a Black man.
I wore a torn skirt, my tall boots,
smear of red lipstick and soaked denim jacket.

My fear of strange men met its match
in the mirror. I looked at him and thought,
danger. He looked at me and thought, deportation.

Trapped between a whore and a cop
on the same street, he would be the one
in handcuffs.

I'm wearing my whiteness home like an umbrella
tonight, covering girl-bones and lipstick and tequila
and your phone number, shame and regret,
leaving crescents of rain down Portage,
crossing the street towards you.