Corner of Henry & Pearl

She begs a dime from a stranger

under a streetlight’s milky glow,

she calls her friend

three towns to the west,

waits shivering.

Behind is the place

where the man raped her.

Then

she puts on a helmet, leathers

lest someone tell

Zeus

or Eros

to look her way,

she straddles the seat,

wraps her arms

to carry

this someone forward

& for her mind & body to reunite

& for the girl she’d been to try again.

Back home her friend lowers her

into warm suds,

hot tears, fragments.