She Half-Remembers

the dim mouth of the theater where they found her,
the lobby’s pungent breath, concessionary hum,
the angle her body made to catch the impossible
words—skid, guardrail, subdural—
before they plunged over the edge
of the afternoon. She can still almost
see the exposed brick outside, its blush
and blur. Minutes before, she was
blind as a cave fish, thinking of nothing,
of the hulls of popcorn trapped between
her teeth. All at once the afternoon, with all its
breeze and heat, was a low-budget film:
ersatz buildings, artificial blood, a long tracking
shot and never later could she see more than that.