A Woman Named Thucydides Poem by Sherod Santos

Having slept in a turnout in the backseat
of her car, she awoke before dawn, shivering,
hungover, unsure of where she was.
To her surprise, the sodium lights on the billboard
she had parked beside were no longer on.
Wind gusts, the smell of rain, the raw, unbroken
landscape like a field of ice. If this had been a movie,
someone would've been sitting up front,
someone who held her fate in his hands.
Though she couldn't see them, she could hear
birds passing overhead. Why do they even bother
to cross so vast and empty a space?
At the moment, none of the usual explanations
made sense. Her head ached, her feet were cold,
she couldn't find the words. And the man up front,
what did he think? What would he do?
Must something still happen before the end?