The Woman You Never Tell, Anyone You Know

is a dusty rippled salt shaker, an old working girl found busy or on a stroll, in a brothel house my grandmother said was often around, when people sold what they could to survive. See her in the morning, and her body is an empty bottle of sweet red wine, bought cheap, kept to deny the rough time. You say now, she was once round and smooth as a glass egg with a rose, blooming in her breast. This woman you knew carried in her purse a working poet and a bronze genie lamp, in case the days moved slow. This woman you knew, displayed a blue-purple dragon she couldn’t let go you knew, once were her husbands, when his father died in his presence, and while he loved drugs. This woman you remember you called a treasure a face, a rainbow, a toy necklace. This woman you sensed, reached for you, during moments when rainfall increased sparrows flew by, and her home a sand-feathered dream catcher. Now nobody cares to admire anymore.