Bourbon Street Lady

Bourbon Street Lady    
   
     She pops the cork on a Chardonnay bottle dreaming of drinking her sorrows away till her wine blush cheeks warm as she leans over the balcony railing gazing down at Bourbon Street with the blues her only hope for sleep this night when the neon prayers aren’t enough to keep the raven at bay who watches her with steely eyes as she strips into lingerie loneliness of a once starry-eyed Catholic school girl who wandered the hallways of "Our Lady of Perpetual Penance" seeking winks from boys whose glazed eyes saw only a chaste maiden.    
     But she sprouted into curves which men devoured in rituals of masculine lust. Yet this evening she lays in the heat with a ceiling fan her only solace when maddening memories masquerade by like in a Mardi Gras Ball till she stumbles into slumber when the sensation of age creeps upon her like an old lover of her catty youth.    
     The heat washes over her like a wet dream. Even women can leave the stain of their dreams on cotton she mused. And she’d done it as good as any man she laughs in between wake and sleep. In the wee hours of a delicate morning she shivers like an old crone nearing the end. But she knows she has many years ahead. Doesn’t she? She ponders wide and deep. Each breath feels like a death rattle.    
     But she faces her personal demons with the strong prospect of immersion in the river Lethe to wash all the taints of her past into oblivion. The sun peeks through her window and touches her sober nakedness with golden heat to awaken her restless soul. She answers Helios summons with eyes wide to the opening future.    
     She retires to the powder room to wash the sweat from her mascara smeared face. Each splash of cold on heat feels like a bath in a baptismal fount to christen her into a new age. She rubs her moistened cloth to wipe away her makeup. Soon her lips are pale, once again, as Poe’s Annabel Lee’s.    
     She steps in the manmade waterfall of her shower and pirouettes under the pelt of liquid joy. Each hot bead steams her skin into pink blushed maidenhood. She shuts off the rush of water. Then she closes her eyes and feels the opium rush of cool air on her drenched body.    
     With sure feet she walks to the window and stands caressed in late spring breeze. She knows that in the French Quarter nudity is a form of art which is appreciated by passerby on streets littered with beer cans and condoms.    
     She wraps in her bathrobe as pre-exhibition drapery on her nude portrait. She sees herself as a bare woman whose beauty is appreciated by many but seen by few. Yet her profession, which is said to be the oldest, exposes her to many clients in her world of men and some women who are privileged to know her charms.    
     But that elusive emotion of love is one she’s only known once. He was stolen from her by a woman who paraded her virtues like a cheap Betty Crocker TV ad. And so it goes for Lily, whose name implies virginity, but whose luster belies more experience in the flesh and spirit.    
     Lily will only paint her face and offer herself in rooms she dares not consider home; for the sacred space of her apartment is her womb where only her heart beats by itself and alone; and so she emerges into the swelter of lust and beer to find a kind of fragrance all her own.