Bloody Bloomin Rose's
Ah, the bloom was on the Rose
yet, the taint of alcohol and drugs
looms nightmare like behind her baby pink cheeks.
Porcelain skin tones, raspberry rogue
nails to scratch and lift bits of dirty lucre.
She was clawing her way up,
and hopefully out, he hits her, “****,” he screams at her.
a sometime replacement sat beside him.
His Chicano inner-city drawl hurt her ears
and the fake diamonds studding them.
The new girl beside him
giggles…
She’s due at work by nine,
grabbing a smooth wrap-top and a mock
grey skirt, she rushes from the room to the bank.
She can still see his long fingers playing in other girls cleavage.
Rose, well, Rose pays the rent. She strikes a teller’s pose
behind the formica countertop...
Long days, counting other peoples money
kindness, and sweetness sucked from her
like a ripe plum on a summers day.
She needs work, more work.
I asked her to help in the garden.
Long blonde, buxom, bending over weeds,
only six months to go to graduation
an associate degree…
Rose chuckles, “Look who I’ve been associatin’ with?”
I eye the twenty-five thou lottery ticket in my jean pocket.
“You want to move here Rose?”
“What would they do without me?”
I sigh, thinking of her alcoholic mother
off bingeing and her “boy fiend”.
The lottery windfall went for Rose’s college tuition.
The bloom is off the Rose now,
two hundred plus pounds later
strung out beside her Mom on a ratty couch,
she eyes the Diploma in it’s cheap black frame,
and rocks her baby girl
some things, never change….
*Names have been changed, and the amount given, but part
of the ending has truely come to pass already [sigh].
The rest is all true.
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