Girl in LA

First Night Jitters

Could she smell her own blood as she stepped down,

The rubber-clad steps of the Greyhound bus?

Did she taste the flavour of corruption,

The street’s glowing slime and contagious pus?

‘Make sure when you arrive there, you call us.’

Her mother’s gentle, caring reminder.

Now rocking warm and alone, a foetus

With an entire lifetime left behind her.

The hungry boulevard has no grandeur,

Her stilettos beat out her innocence.

The wolves emerge from their red-lit shelter,

Keen snouts pricking the air for precious scents.

One night down so many more to be lived.

To what end if the first is not survived?

Second Week Realisation

The morning coffee smells like a rare gift,

Undeserved, yet so desperately grateful.

She stares vacantly into the black rift,

Tiled with sunshine, her corpse sips and feels full.

Her fake Gucci bag by her blistered feet,

Across the path, she spies its reflection.

Its white, lambskin handles kiss the hot street,

Whilst its owner basks in blank pretention.

Such women are made of her childhood dreams,

Mannequins littering her childhood home.

She slams down her half-drunk coffee and screams,

The dummies stare from their faces of stone.

She goes clattering off down the sidewalk,

Out of earshot, the women do not talk.

Third Month Numb

Skin-like scales of torn paper make their bed,

On the tessellated floor of her home,

Once important lines marked over with red,

Now hollow and torn, their meanings unknown.

Scraps of language littering her sweet head,

So many tongues and names, yet she’s alone.

The woman she was in her dreams is dead

Her own voice a blank, cadaverous tone.

Her life lies in piles, just size two algae,

Her eyes have bled out, her pelvis aching,

She so yearned to be an anomaly,

But ended up the same as everything.

A body sold on a sun-baked story,

And then sold again for next to nothing.