this is her alley

it is the heat, maybe.  the sweltering, longing, non-forgiving heat wrapping around you separating comfort from survival, keeping you alive.   settled in the bassinet, wrapped in dirty rags, umbilical cord, messy and erect. 

the girl enters the street, an alley filled with filth.  the sounds of loneliness inflate and contract—obvious and not so obvious—she hears it all.

the child-woman hears her voice.

her breath is bare, nearly translucent in any form, so slight that she cannot make out any words.  the sound is merely a syllable, the intonation--young—yet translated.  no delivered.  as heard from the hollow walls of a large pink cavernous conch shell.

she has stretched this voice, her bottled voice over walls and floors across bathroom tiles and kitchen counters, dragged through arguments and weeping, introduced her to mothers and fathers and lovers.  belted to her side, exhausted from fits of anger, keeping with the speed of running from suitcase to city.

time stops when

she hears the woman say

      “…the truth left

        between you and I

        is the girl---the mute child…”

and now

     she is ravaged, born across these sweaty sheets

     bed woven bare

     her sex lashing broken chords

     better kept unsaid

     the girl undoes your eyes

     she’ll breed selfish greed

     a child left to haul the mattress

     from the floor, where a mother’s

     hand put the blade to rest,

tomorrow.

this is her alley, the flag above her war.

link to trifecta week 31 "alley"