WAYS OF LEAVING

What I remember best about Rome

is the middle-aged woman

we saw on the path near

the Baths of Caracalla,

sitting in the rain

with her legs straight out,

one elbow leaning on a suitcase,

a plastic kerchief on her head.

A car stopped and a man

leaned out the window, said something

in Italian. She wouldn’t look at him,

just shook her head, no, no, the cars

honking behind him and he pulled away.

She looked solid and respectable,

middle-class. I wondered

what kind of life

she was walking out of,

what was worse than these streets,

this pouring rain.

A block past,

we looked back, saw the car again,

the man rolling down his window,

the woman shouting now, No!

We smiled at that,

not knowing then we would leave each other

just as absurdly, three years later,

in a different country,

in the rain.