Movie

by Tim Seibles

It was already on when you came in:

a two-lane road, the car’s high beams
blaming the dark. In the rearview mirror,
the downtown of a city—familiar, but not.

Because you have found yourself
cast in the world without your consent,

you think you must be something
like other people—like the dude
two rows back with his face lit by a phone

or maybe like the star behind the wheel:
one eye swollen, the other tight in a squint.

You want to know what happened,
what’s happening and where the road
will go and when and soon

she’s standing outside a 7-11
filling up her dusty, dark-blue Mustang.

Early sun steams the back window.
Maybe she drove all night—

her voice: part sorrow, part wind
under the overhang. Why didn’t I

see it before, she asks aloud
for everyone, flexing the engine,

ready to go.
This is the story of what

happens when what
has seemed one way

turns out to be another way:
like a priest.

Even when the day is sprung,
and you wake up trapped
in everything, you want this face

on screen: cool, without a flinch.

Even the way she steers
is a declaration—you want to drive
like that.

You could drive like that:

like somebody in charge,
somebody who “knows the deal.”

On the passenger seat,
half-stashed in her scarf, a .38.

Your mind moves to revenge: how

your circumstances just don’t
make any sense. You want

to know who made it this way

and one chance to make them
back down and beg: the reversal,

sizzling with drama and music
that means you were right

all along. That’s why you

keep watching—like everyone else
holding their sodas in the dark.

She could be a friend,
A nice person who deserves

some goddam justice. You
can tell she’d like another life:

without so many
hard decisions adding up

to only one. Maybe

you really are the character
other people think you are,

even though they can’t hear
what’s playing in your head.

After the movie, you walk
back into the mall wondering

if you could do what
she did. That was

pretty good, you mutter
with no one nearby

and light all over your face.

See more poems from Tim Seibles debuted on The Fight & The Fiddle: “The Last Black Cargo Blues Villanelle,” and“Naive.”

The Fight & The Fiddle