I Heard Her Ask Me

We were at the Pizza Hut with some of her friends,
this was in college, a long time ago, but I remember.
People were talking and she said something. I disagreed.
I said so. She disagreed right back at me. Without thinking,
without thinking about her, I said, "shut up," and kept going.

She did. She shut up, but I didn't notice that she went quiet.
I went on with my dinner, the conversation, and my years
of self-obsession. I understand only now what she did:
she stopped hearing the conversations, heard only
the two words I said so off-handedly and unaware.

That night she told me how much it had hurt her,
to hear me say that, to speak that way to her in front of friends.
I tried to brush it off, I tried to say it was nothing.
But she said that it was not, she said it was everything,
and she made me hear the words and feel the meanings.

I knew then that she was strong, that I was weaker,
and I knew that I had to listen to her if I wanted to be
the man that I always imagined I could be,
the man I'm still imagining, a shadow who keeps
eluding me, twelve steps ahead, ducking down corners,

when I keep making so many wrong turns
all the while hearing her voice and knowing
that if I just followed, if I could just listen...