Never Can Tell

She wakes and feels
the past lurking beside her,
the ghost she cannot leave behind,
pummeling, insistent.

She wakes and prays,
whoever is there to hear,
get me through this day,
I’ll never ask for more.

She wakes and dresses
her bits of scattered self,
hauling scarred pieces to
their proper places, endlessly preparing.

At the door, she checks for menace
in hallways, scanning streets
for fleshy threats and phantoms,
remembering her whom she always meant to be.
.
Out the door,
she strides straight ahead
as if fearless, limitless
and ready.

She arrives full with this
unreckoned power, feeling this day
pregnant with difference, this day
ready, perhaps, to do what yesterday did not.