The Bike Messenger's Lunch Poem by James Lee Jobe

The woman became more ragged
as the summer wore on, dirtier, thinner.
Middle-aged, she would stand in front

of the skyscraper at 555 California Street,
San Francisco, and from a wisp of paper
she'd read an endless list of all the wrongs

ever done to her. The time her father forgot,
and left her at school, and she was small
and afraid. The time her husband

took the kids and disappeared forever,
though she'd searched and wandered.
How God came to forget her. Everyday

she would stand there till the security guards
would shoo her away. I began
to give her my lunch if I was around

California and Kearney at the same time
as her. Sometimes she'd shyly reach
out for it, embarrassed. Other times

it seemed that she didn't see me,
like she was a ghost, or like I was, as if
we did not exist on the same plane,

just in the same place. Still other times
she'd back away from me, eyes wild,
her thin arms up as if to ward off blows.

Toward the end of summer, she was gone.
I never heard anything about her again. By then
she was filthy, skin and bones and a hank

of stiff hair. The last time I saw her I was inside
555 California Street, and the woman's back
was to the plate glass window. I walked up

and looked over her shoulder as she read her list.
The slip of paper was blank, and I cried as her stiff,
dry hair stood out in the San Francisco wind.