of: Nightlife II ^

The Christmas lights were burning around
town, and, faintly emitted from City Hall
came the jingle of bells playing for the
ears of the empty walkways, relentlessly
trying to spread cheer.

From a buried street corner, I watched
the wet glimmer beneath the doorway,
the bricks were slippery as the sound
of high heels clanked by, going to a
meeting where they would pay their
dues to a man they called Daddy.

On that lonely street, we all had our stories,
but that hole-in-the-wall, like the oblique of
a dungeon, only pulled us in, and the
meeting, as it did every night, began with
a hoorah from the crowd and a top
falling off on stage.

Margot strolled adjacent to me, not caring
she was late for the meeting, and
looked me in the eyes, clearly and
business-like. Inexperienced.
When I told her I wouldn’t pay,
she shrugged, and turned around – an
easy catch for drunk divorcees and
middle-aged men gone bankrupt.

Time passed and I felt the crowd inside pull
until the meeting cleared. Daddy laughed a
jovial, rotten stench that clamored against the
metal outside, letting all of us know he made
more money than last night.

Margot was out of sight, hidden under the
shed layers of the auction. The grime of
the gutters gurgled softly as a pitter
stretched the sky. I paced towards the
doorway and, before entering, looked up
at the midnight lights.

Daddy met me in the foyer, knew who I came
for, smiled jagged, crooked teeth, lead
me up, and opened a door – the rank of drying
mildew.

And there was Margot again, underneath
a man that would never love her, on top of
a bed that would never be hers, surrounded
by a poverty she owned twice over, watched
by a girl that, she knew, with the flip of
life’s wrist, could’ve very well been her.

But Margot closed her eyes, and let the
night take her, falling asleep to the heaving
of any man above her.

And regardless of what they did, or what
she thought, during every moment, Margot
was more beautiful than the dry whispers
of the stars, more delicate than the echo of
bells on the breeze – more real than the
old doggy-folded corners of a novel she
wrote dusk after dusk, crumpled into off-white
sheets in the form of old garnet lipstick stains
hissing, faking and rehearsing

I love you.

”Margot” - 2007