Melancholy's prostitute

I was young when I tasted the velvet lips of desire
I was dirty when it wasn't in fashion.
Dark glasses are part of my evening attire
and my dress is designed of shadows;
you can see my yearning flesh if you come close.

There's a fine line between pain and pleasure;
it blurrs like reckless watercolors in the rain
and I dance beneath the fusillade of a rapturous tempest.

A smile is just window dressing for justifiable depravity.
Behind my own, a thin veil of hope hangs effetely in the dark.
I fear the day it will finally collapse under the weight of time and obscurity.

Enervated, my body is a vessel for what is left of an archaic soul.
I carry my burdens, I search across many arduous miles for my revenant.
He waits there, a brooding shadow, a fragment of myself etched in sombre truths.

I was loved, I was laid, I was beaten, betrayed,
but I was never invisible.

If I were a harlot of the streets and the whore of men
they would mark me remarkable.
I am taken for my womanly charms in the bed of loneliness  -
I am melancholy's prostitute.

(Artwork by  David Levinthal)