Whimsically floating,
she glints like a child,
alone in her vision.
“I’m going to New York
to play in traffic.”
A picture of vivaciousness,
stirred with the impulsive.

Grounded in stone and responsibilities.

And like a bird’s flight,
she means now, today.
Face jumping like a bee,
sporadic excitement flowing,
she grabs the lemon raincoat.
“I’m gonna taste a vendor’s hot dog
and look in Madonna’s window.”

I hate hot dogs.

She sings about carriages
and living in the park.
Of disco ball Fridays,
and philosophical book clubs.
“Central Park is the place.
The only place to live.”
And she might be able to do it,
dusting the crowd with dreams.

Silence.

“I need to go.
I am suffocating here.”
She dreams of how her curtains,
her swirly, homemade curtains,
could brush the trees in the park.
And like a cloud,
dust puffs in from the window,
proving her point.

Rain is coming, be practical.

“I must bring the book,”
and in goes Confessions of a Viagra Addict,
her reason for the Calculus grade.
There is always a reason,
she says belligerently.

And I believe it.

Aging underwear tossed in,
surrounded by mismatched earrings.
Her toothbrush forgotten,
shoved under the bed,
comforting an abandoned shoe.
“I need the perfect perfume.”

Desperate for Normalcy.

As the excitement starts to fade,
she drifts away mistily.
Taking the dreams.
The raincoat is folded back,
gingerly placed in a chest.
And when everything is put way,
the magic is gone with the dust.

I can’t go.

“But neither can you stay,”
she says from the back of my mind,
momentarily pacified by oncoming dusk.
As I fight back the excitement,
the crazed impulses,
I know the time is coming.

Trick me, use me, teach me, she screams in my head,
silent except for the grim laugh shining from her eyes.
Excitement courses through my veins,
defining her fear and my direction.
Her naked body glistens with sweat,
a tribute to some god long forgotten
in the journey from that insignificant town
where that sweet-faced boy was found,
hanging from the lone light fixture
in a room desolate and haunted by drooping promises.
Promises that I could stop,
that I would think about something other
than the cheap steel pressed against my throat
as my innocence was ripped away,
just as hers is about to be,
any lingering trace of youth.
Ah, yes it has been a long road to this dingy motel
in a long series of crusty bedspreads and dripping sinks,
of dirty whores and empty sacks, sprinkled with cocaine.
My one remaining textbook, a nod to that small college town,
the town I deserted in blind desperation,
acts as her head rest,
and grainy ropes tie her to tonight’s fate.
And she doesn’t even allow one singular tear to shine for me.
Because we were both dead, long before the light deserted us,
long before the gruesome church bells could save us,
long before this moment of silent comprehension could illuminate the truths of the past.