I forget I am a woman walking alone and wave
          at a maroon car, assuming it’s a neighbor or a friend.

The car then circles the block and goes past me five times.
          One wave and five times the car circles. Strangers.

It is the early evening, the fireflies not yet out,
          I trick the hunting car by pretending to walk into

a different house. I am upset by this, but it is life, so I make
          dinner and listen to a terrible audiobook on Latin American

literature that’s so dull it’s Dove soap. Violence is done and history
          records it. Gold ruins us. Men ruin us.

That’s how the world 
was made, don’t you know?

A group of us, to tune out grief every week, are watching
          dance movies. Five women watching people leap and grind.

Every time I watch the films, I cry. Each week, even though
          We are hidden from each other by distance, I know

I am the first to break into tears. Something about the body
          moving freely, someone lifting it, or just the body

alone in movement, safe in the black expanse of stage. The body
          as rebellion, as defiance, as immune.

Aracelis writes to tell me she’s had a dream where
          I am in Oaxaca wearing a black dress covered with animals.

In her dream I am brushing and brushing my hair with a brush
          made out of animal hair. There is a large mirror and a room

full of books.
History comes at us through the sheen of time.

I write back, Was it ominous or was it hopeful?
She says, The word I am thinking of is “strong.”

I kindle the image in my body all day, the mirror, the brush,
          the animals, the vast space of the imagination,

the solid gaze of a woman who has witnessed me as unassailable,
          the clarity of her vision so clean I feel almost free.