In the office, she wrote everything on yellow paper: legals pads, while-you-were-outs, carbon copies, and sticky notes. Her eyes, so accustomed to the faded yellow of her workdays, had difficulty ... [+]
In the glow of this
neon mountain,
framing her face
like a fluorescent halo
from behind the bar,
she glances now and then
out the window to the highway.
Near sunset,
the air is dry.
Dusty with cigarette smoke
that settles
into the silky remains of
unkept promises.
She's nearly forgotten the
orange
taste of hope –
Instead –
compromised,
bartered,
given,
what mattered.
Her life is divided
decidedly in two:
who she is and
who she used to be.
Thin skin, her face has
aged
too quickly.
Her hair stopped growing
once it snaked
to somewhere
past her hips.
And now she
sometimes notices
that it is ribboned with
grey,
barely.
(Listen to her soft
vocabulary
of kindness
that echoes
the needs
she used
to know:
Longing.
Madness.
Love.)
She still hopes
he watches her
walk away,
back to her side
of the bar,
Back to the
shadowed dream,
the grit under her
unpainted fingernails
that keeps her grounded here.
She tells herself that
Nothing lasts forever,
not even this.