A place for thoughts

A woman draws breath
Nostrils heavy with vibrant scents
Streets perfumed with urine and heat
Life-stench, calloused aroma.
She kneads arthritic hands, wipes the sweat on thinning jeans
Non-designer-aged catacombs for legs immobilized
By interwoven tapestries of loss, fear, anger.
Holy trinity.

They used to dance in torrents like rain storms on August’s hot cement
Water vapor rising, telling clouds’ secrets, damp on jubilant faces; all teeth.
Skin taunt with passion, draped over repetition’s physique
Serrated muscle and joints.
This was when they owned balanced.
When arms were raised to anything but God.
When rhythms were their pandemics.
When partnering was more intimate than sex.
When birds looked at humans in awe.
For moments, she was the best of us.

Now, sidewalk gargoyled, she heaves and weeps as if excommunicating her soul
From a body no longer tamed; dry-boned.
Family’s first dreamer
Potential-fueled visions of change and meaning and legacy
Built modest hardwood floors and mirrored-walls.
She gave her community a safe home for their children’s eager feet.
Fostering youth, infusing hope into once barren-eyed dolls.
Twenty-seven years of counter-balancing setbacks against laughter;
Chess-matched life embraced by a woman accustomed to adversity,
But not immune.

Until one day…

Toes tight on sanity’s precipice,
Clawing deeply to last footholds of decency.
How many sacrifices can one make
And still be forgotten
By all those she loved with monastic devotion?
Her voice, though rough and raged, mottles with millions
Of broken-minded beggars and misfit transients
Whom I roll by, near off-ramps and bridges
Windows-up
Locked-doors
Empty-hearted
Human cruelty.