Dear Ruth, On the Occasion of Regretting Vulnerability

“At midnight the man was startled and turned over, and there, lying at his feet, was a woman!”
(Ruth 3:8)

You went to him in the night.
Did you rehearse it? The lines
Naomi gave? Your own
additions? Did you want
him to find you beautiful
in the beautiful dark?

It must have been cold,
or maybe you were warm with worry.
In another story, Boaz could’ve said no,
could’ve said, what are you doing here,
at my feet, so inappropriate
and garish and desperate?

In another story, the older man
wouldn’t have wanted you. Or he’d
have wanted only your body, so young
and there. You wouldn’t become a matriarch
or a story yourself—just
a forgotten foreign widow who
loved her mother-in-law and
That would’ve happened to me.

Would you still have stood by it—
your bold request, Cover me—
if he turned you away in the night?
Would rejection have rolled
off your shoulders, investment
minimal in this man you only
knew, thus far, as benevolent patron?

Maybe I’m asking the wrong questions.
Tell me: what would you have done if it were Naomi
insisting Ruth, go home,
no matter your devotion?
perhaps resented her later.

---

This poem also appears in the December 2023 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 88, No.12, page 8). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.