deepundergroundpoetry.com

boulevard princess

� � ��this is what we were given�
� � ��this is our heaven�

she heard that song every day. it was the song of the people
she lived among: the destitute & the lepers,
thieves & beggars & grave robbers.

she lived where the alleys are long & wide, where you had to
fight the rats for food. sometimes you just ate the rats. and
sometimes the rats ate you. it was a place where people died
every day, from disease & rot, and often by their own hand,
because the misery became too unbearable.

she learned how to steal & beg like them, and she took that skill,
that survival skill, to the avenues & boulevards of prosperous
society. she walked among them like a ghost, an imperceptible
shadow, able to take their small possessions & leave them unaware.

but sometimes a man�or a woman�would notice her, and think they
could use her for their own deviant pleasure. they would take her to a
room where she could bathe, lie on a sacrificial bed, and be debased
by them. they would suck, as leeches suck, upon her youth & beauty,
as they attempted to saturate her with their own moral decay.

when they slept, she took what she could & returned to the alleys &
the pain of her people. there was an honor in them that she did not
find in �proper� society.

they took scraps of vines which they fashioned into a thorny crown,
placed it on her head. they anointed her �Princess�, and she would
listen as they chanted their creed:

� � �we are the dirty, we live in the filth
� � �it�s where we are, it�s who we are
� � �it�s what we have, it�s all we�ll ever have�

� � �this is what we were given
� � �this is our heaven