She Wasn't Talking to Me

She was folding a dish towel when she said it—

never looked up. Something about worry

being a prayer for what you don't want. I let it

go. I was twelve. I was in a hurry

to be somewhere else. Filed it away.

Left it there for twenty years—

the things old women say

that don't apply to you. It clears

your head, deciding that. This week

in a grocery line, some man

was going head-to-head—I mean, deep

in it—with a cashier. The plan

was forty cents. He wanted them back.

Not forty dollars. Cents.

And I heard her—not her voice, a crack

of sense—her hands, the events

of her kitchen, the dish towel,

the fold already in her hands,

the sentence done. The quiet scowl

of someone who already understands.

I said it out loud in the car.

First time. It fit instead of tired.

She wasn't talking to me. That far

back, she was. I just required

twenty more years of weather

to hear it.