What a damn fool I was—stumbling around

in prison workclothes on an open road.

I tried to hitch a ride, and right away

a lady picked me up. She said I looked

just like her son in Tulsa. She talked a lot.

There’s always someone stupider than you.

I ditched the car at nightfall in a field,

and walked the six miles home. I knew the way.

VIII.

I walked up to the house, then went around.

The front door was for company, not me.

I went up to the kitchen porch and knocked.

I was afraid that she’d look old and sick,

that I would lose my nerve, but then she answered,

looking the same and acting as if she

were not at all surprised to see me there.

She looked the same, and yet I realized

that moment how I had forgotten all

the features of her face. More likely I

had never really noticed them at all—

her freckled skin, the bump along her nose,

the narrow tight-drawn lips which formed a smile

that I had seen before, not just on her.

It was the smile I greeted in the mirror.

I never knew till then where I had learned it.

How strange the people we are closest to

remain almost invisible to us

until we leave them. Then, on our return,

we recognize the faces in our dreams.

I saw her calmly now. And what I saw

was an old woman close enough to death.

How pointless my revenge seemed in that moment.

Nothing could redeem the past—or me.

I had no right to come and stand in judgment.

IX.

These thoughts took just a moment, then I heard

“I’ll set another place for you at supper.”

She had a way about her, see? A way

of putting everyone back in their place,

no matter who they were or what they wanted.

She knew that she had won. And didn’t care.

That’s when I noticed she had set three places.

Reading the question on my face, she said,

“I have another boy who lives here now.”

I told her that I wanted to wash up,

but went instead back to the extra bedroom,

and walked right in.

I guess I must have scared him.

He was a scrawny kid with short red hair,

not more than twelve with narrow mousy eyes.

He sat there on the rug, his mouth half-open,

his baseball cards laid out across the floor.

I knew the room. It hadn’t changed at all.

The blistered paint, the battered bed and desk

still moaned about the cost of charity.

He crouched there looking at me silently.

Watching him tense, I knew how many times

that angry men had come to him before.

He had the wisdom of the unloved child

who knew he had been damned by being born.

I closed the door behind me. Frantically

he gathered up his cards to stash away.