Working the Shadows
Under the cover of daylight, beneath the mill
and hustle of teaming crowds; a need
and a life-grinding poverty
swept her down a wrong way.
She strayed into streets so narrow
entered them as a shadow-less shadow
stayed where rank rooms were rent by the hour
where tussled bedsheets her only ownership.
A small child might have slipped past
the ranks of pot-bellied loungers,
but the pimps were as thin as switch blades
and their eyes scavenged
for any walking flesh.
No one kidnapped her; abused her much,
she was taken by her own weakened self,
nabbed by an ever willing surrender.
Did she come to a dark end?
Only the flickering city lights
at the end of a day
can both ask and answer
that long searched for question.
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