By sarah dragonfleyes@excite.com
Date: 4 January 2001
she died daily
she used to die daily.
in agony
with distorted limbs and contorted mouth, sometimes she would make sure to add a pool of drool underneath where her mouth rested.
not that she wanted to die.
she just didn't have any other choice.
she had to.
sometimes i would watch her, flowing past on her cloud, wipping around that cape she always wore around her neck. It was a tattered bunch of material crudely sewn together.
she was never without it.
she was a patchwork quilt herself.
pieces sewn together from this year or that year, sometimes a minute here, a tear there, and then she pulled it all together into the present and wore it as her badge.
you could be unaware of her your whole life, i was. she could be standing inches away from you, but unless you were alert that day, or something struck you to look up and connect with her eyes. you never knew she existed.
she never said a word.
she just died.
i didn't notice her until she died.
and then she was everywhere.
i followed her patchwork quilt cape, the colors brilliant in the gray day. she was her own sunshine.
she would run off to an alley covered high in grimy red bricks, the reek of trash pungent.
there she sat on a milk crate and died. her body shouting out its pain, collapsing in on itself, and then she was on the ground, her bodied martyred to the alleyway.
then she was gone.
i saw her the next day, and the next...and the next...
and every day she died.
the last day she died, i followed her as usual. but i changed my routine, i sat down next to her on the battered milk crate, i took her dirty hand in mine and kissed her fingertips.
she did'nt die that day.
but i did.
and now i wait for someone to follow me.
and kiss my fingers.
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