Ambient Prisoner’s Dilemma

        We must have seemed so strange
brushing past traders, exorbitant umbrella hawkers,
        squeezing through thick processions of secondhand
T-shirts, dresses, corsets held against the body in
        that public, most intimate fitting room of the eye’s
approximation. Across the stretch, wind thrashed
        the dampness of rain.

On we’d go past Ambassadeur, through Accra
        Lane, sighting the blue-tiled Taj Mahal of bus station
temple. Lining behind the rush hour onslaught
        of Ngumo-Line Sacco travelers. Under the fresh
linen of rain, pushing the crooked line’s snailpace
        before, at last, each of us hoisted ourselves onto
the empty front cabin of a matatu.

        Everything part of Nairobi’s daily horoscope:
the seats’ worn leather, stuck windows, no safety belts
        to fasten—and no metaphor either. There was also
the driver’s late arrival, soaked in rain’s first offertory.
        Multiple attempts to cough the cold engine
ablaze, its rude awakening. As though revenge, its heat
        kettling our seats as we geared through traffic.

On splashing tarmac, acres of skyscraper shadows,
        the piercing appetite of headlights. At the edge
of the city, wide as our whole neighborhood,
        it seemed almost a relief—our tongue-tied selves
hypnotized by the endless gray and green of the city
        cemetery—its bedded arrangements: final,
longing still, graceful even.

        Our mix of horror, exhilaration, and gratitude
studying mangled vehicles at accident scenes
        where traffic again halted. As though a misgiving,
the chorus of flashing hazard lights, the dissonant
        hooting, each of us sealed into our hives of silence,
our unpunctuated measures of fault. Was there
        anything to say a night or two perhaps before,
finally, the parting? Fruit of impasse, on and on,
        this bitter tonsil of regret.

        This morning     between us an ocean’s continent
of cooling time, we both knew it I now understand,
        separately—together—our skewered togetherness
unmendable, continuous. None of this, I suppose,
        matters much now. Still and all, together we’d watched
those windshield wipers strive to squeeze each rain-
        drop to nothing. Each left-right wave parting the mist,
suddenly, to half the world before us; cloudburst,
        its own direction, its own fresh specificities.

Each low roof in the foggy horizon announcing
        our nearing to home. Those days, that June, that city-
scape drawing us, time and time, to the outside

Read more from Issue 22.1.