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mariah
the wind carries our stories. it knows intimately our histories,
each of us, & there is nothing that we can hide from the wind.
our dreams & fears, our search for love & the love that seeks
us. our loneliness, our denial. & our poetry. if we have spoken
it, it’s in the wind.
the wind blows gentle when it tells me the story of a girl. it
doesn’t speak her name, because she has many names. call
her runaway; color her the dark purple of hurt. put her on an
overland bus when she has no money. the driver will keep
her close & use her in the back when the bus is empty. a man
gets what he wants. a girl gets what she needs, & the scarlet
letters of harlot written across her chest.
her body was merely a commodity to be traded for a warm meal,
a soft bed to sleep in. these basic tenets of survival, where’s the
sin in that?
evenings on the corners with a hardcore platoon of working girls
in the whore’s uniform: heels too high & skirts too short. mascara
that melted down her cheeks in black liquid sorrow. she took the
money & ran to the next cold fuck, the next blow job.
the wind knew her infamy. it heard her wail in the middle of the night
when she mourned a simple joy that eluded her, & the despondence
realized in the incredible distance between yesterday & tomorrow. &
the wind knew one more thing:
her virgin heart was deep within, a sanctum far, far from the abused,
disgraced body of a whore, & no man would ever steal it…
I listen to the wind when there is no other song.
(Art: ‘Weeping Magdalen’ by Charles I. Berg)
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