Leave them the invisible chances of those circumstances,
the contradictions, the muddy paths of the slack-jawed,
the convolutions, the slow run between the bend of two
roads twirling the map of imagination.
They slide past a tumult of grass.
If she had some advantages, many times she would have saved
human warmth like yeast gathering on the wrong moment,
the solemn pastures of the evanescing shadow. All she could
give was a stubborn figment of a confession barely clawing at
the truth, knowing she was not capable of a lie. It was a grace
she brought, like a quickness of temper in the wrong places,
an amazing knowledge of the possible. In the dim light, she left a
furtive slip, a trail of dust whispers that could only happen in
some fast-tracked movie on the dry-stone wall, among the sedge
and tall grass, "This way—this was where it happened."

Reprinted with the author's permission from Puti/White, Toronto: Frontenac House, 2005

© Patria Rivera