Dear Perfect Stranger and Nature Poem

art by Alessandro Avondo

by Gabriela Halas

*Content warning: mentions of unwanted sexual attention and aggression

Dear perfect stranger,

It’s you again! We’ve met before. Though, your face, admittedly, has blurred with the rest. But I know it’s you. You’re the captain on that ship you keep sailing around my breasts, my face, my car, the bar, the beach, the street. You’re posh and shiny, or middle-class, someone’s dad, and once, no— a few times, you were just some young dude leering too close. HELL-O—

Perfect stranger, YES— you are fucking danger—

You are the man, gathered as we were, in grid-lock Route 101 traffic. I had just left work in Palo Alto, and we had both crawled past Millbrae or San Bruno, I could never keep track. I was thinking of those damn butterflies, the mission blues that are losing hillside real estate as quickly as anyone on that Peninsula who isn’t crammed with cash, their blue-wing fragility flashing past my vague and tired mind, and so I turned. To you, perfect stranger, as a girl in a car is apt to do when trying to occupy her mind (that’s me saying why I looked to my right, instead of my left) and there you were. Flashing your pink hand along your pink dick, grinning, as stranger’s do, when traffic is locked, caged, and enraged— I had nowhere to go. I had never not wanted my peripheral vision, but in those long and dragging minutes, as you idled your car right next to mine, and as rush-hour started jerking, there you were, following my car even when your lane was clear, but mine was still stuck, glaring and grinning and jerking along. I had never not wanted my female form, but in those long and dragging min—

WAIT hold there— there are plenty of times I had not wanted this self: these boobs and thighs, this ass and mouth. The same one, other stranger, that spring-sun-rare-day, Vancouver, where I was walking and thinking and breathing (that’s me saying I wasn’t giving you the eye) and there as you passed, you decided to greet me. “Smile! Woman, smile! Look happy!” and I lurched, expecting a slap. On my ass. This had already happened so many times before, that I braced. You laughed, it was over so fast, and I was generally taught, when a man talks to me, I answer back. But I couldn’t. Couldn’t say anything. Walked in silence to school, got on the #95 B-line to SFU⸻

Where I attended your class. Back when I was thirty and upgrading in such difficult chemistry I was sure I would never pass. So I went to your office (that’s me saying I trusted you) and we spent hours running math’s and damn if I didn’t finally get it, could write toxicology equations like those blond-haired jocks. And I was proud. Proud like an arts kid getting into science. And remember that day, perfect professor of mine, where the week before final class presentations, you asked me for sex and said something about my hairy armpits? My smell. I’d never not loved my smell. Until you. Until you leaned in and inhaled. Me. Me.

Dear me. It’s been a long and fitful year. One year became two became three, and dear me, these strangers are still here? Still prowling along? Still part of the song of my body? And song sounds so pleasant, but it’s dissonance, distortion, RAGE. Is still the way it stays stuck, one tune after another. One stranger after another.

Dear stranger⸻

Nature Poem

Sometimes when I’m out walking, I’m embarrassed to say, I keep my phone in hand. I look for meager clues of my existence. Small symbols to let me know if someone thinks I’m real. I’ve taken my phone for a walk to feel less lonely in the afterglow of this Rocky Mountain sunrise. The neighbor’s horses push their faces into freshly dropped hay. They grind away the morning through the tartness of their sweet, dry grass. The robins are finally out, after a long, cold winter. Spearing the earth to wake up. In other words, it’s beautiful out. I’m embarrassed to say sometimes I forget.

The glow in my hand, oh invisible blue, calls at me. Signs and icons notify of pressing news. I punch them away. I punch them anyway. This seems strange, the contrast. I’m walking in the woods, my dog noses after spring grouse, and I glance at the screen. Am I real? Am I here? I’m embarrassed to say sometimes I forget. I could hide the phone from this poem. Write a nature poem instead. And who would know I was hiding anything. Sometimes the woods are a lonely place. Despite the living, I get lonely. Is there an icon for loneliness? I ask the screen.

Sometimes I trip when I’m walking like this. Then I’m embarrassed even though no one is around to see me. My dog doesn’t care, she’s off chasing squirrels. I scold myself and put the phone away. I’m under a sky and that sky has turned baby blue. No babies float in it, just the colors they’ve left behind. Silk drawn over the dome of the earth. I think sometimes we have babies because we are lonely. I love to look at the sky when I remember it’s there. I’m embarrassed to say sometimes I forget. The sky, oh visible blue, presses down on me. Comes alive as scattered waves. I don’t fully understand how color becomes a thing.  I know I could search the answer from within the palm of my hand.

Nothing is ever in the same place as yesterday. Colors are always changing. The gauzy light has shifted once again. Warm air rises up the Rocky slopes in predictable patterns. The sky-babies have moved on and in their place arrives a cornflower blue. I’m embarrassed to say I looked up a palate of blues to get the name right. My dog comes back to me panting and free. We’ve looped back and the horses stare at us. Being social creatures it’s best to keep more than one. Loneliness might kill a horse. I didn’t look that up. The toe I stubbed has started to pulse and swell. Sometimes I need to remember I’m real, this tender clue enough.

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