November 19, 2018
There is a woman in a warehouse
That she calls her home
With a long-haired artist boyfriend, mid-fifties
And she is a writer
With trim figure and jean jacket
And all around them trash and trinkets
And a toilet that flushes all across the bathroom floor
She make a chicken dinner for us
And smoked on the couch as he did
And I remember the ring of smoke curling like a snake
Around us
R looking at me nervously
But I was engrossed
By this woman with the thin figure and the long, straight hair
And the disposition of an angel
Who sat poised and graceful
And belonged no doubt
On the back patio of some southwestern villa
Surrounded by bouganvillas and terra cotta
Not beer bottles and inch-thick dust and windows greasy and boarded with cardboard
Her writing desk sat the middle of it all
Like a sinking ship
Regal and long-lost
With stories to tell
Not just on paper
But of what this massive square footage could tell
And how it all came to be
And there she was
Making chicken and mashed potatoes and peas
In a kitchen that consisted of a hot plate and a microwave
People are capable of the hardest of masks
Was she secretly screaming, Get me out of here?
After dinner, we sat on sinking couches in a cigarette-coffin of a living room
Surrounded by old magazines
And flickering fluorescent lights
R wanted to leave
But despite my heaving lungs
I was fascinated by the woman
With the slender figure and the jean jacket
And the silver jewelry strategically placed
Who aparaently loved her life
With the artist
And who wrote enlightened poetry
From her perch in the middle of squalor.