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| a prostitute - Picasso |
Waking up from a drunken stupor
she looks around her shabby room.
Ashtrays full, plates piled in the sink
and a mattress with
soiled bed sheets
—her faithful
and trusted servants—
torn from years of
loveless coupling.
curtain with cheap
soap, cheap shampoo
and an even cheaper scent;
into a bra
that's a size or three too small
and a skirt
that's been too short for years.
She smokes a
roll-up and drinks raki
until she hears her cue for work—
a ship's horn
blowing in the distance.
Gasping for air, rank with stale tobacco
and laced with shattered dreams, she opens
her front door
and waddles to the harbour.
She recalls her wrecked
and wasted life.
First the fear,
the panic and the shame
then the buzz, the
laughter and the thrills;
until Time —deceitful and a shameless thief—
stole her youth
away.
Each night
brought a new assault.
Every morning
she nursed
the battle scars
from the night before
—a small blemish
on her flawless skin,
a grey strand in
her wild black mane—
until one day the
face she saw in the mirror
was not her face
any more.
She gazes at the
lilacs of the sea
and listens
to the noise, savouring
the odours of all
the sailors passing by.
Such a sweet
aroma. Her head feels light
and maybe
because of the bottle of raki
or the warmth of
the late Mediterranean sun
she drifts into
a rumbling reverie.
In her much
loved and much kissed body
all the hurt and
pain are now gone.
Old lovers'
faces rise in her wrinkled mind—
kings, Bedouins
and sultans;
black, white and
yellow faces, merge
and she is
seventeen and beautiful again.
She dreams and
writhes on a rotting bench
until a group of
sailors come passing by.
They stop and
stare at the old wreck
and
—merciless youth—
they jeer and mock her.
She wakes and
hears their ridicule
the laughter and the heartless jibes.
With tears in her jaded eyes
and cursing the cruelty of the young
she takes the road to the sanctuary
of her seedy room, grieving for the day
that ended before it even had begun.
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