Words a child prostitute might say

 

I throw marbles at you,

shinny, glassy pebbles

once long ago

new.

And I

love to feel them in my

palm,

cool and inanimate,

small, unattached.

I alone give them warmth.

They thrive off my breath.

They do not come

with any path of old footsteps,

cold blood.

I cover them completely

in my fleshy glove.

 

I remember when I was

smaller still

throwing the marbles

into the cool, crisp air.

They crash off windowsills,

drop down

like falling wingless birds

onto the smooth dirt below

roll and swerve

their path across

my mother’s barren hearth.

At least I think

she was my mother.

At least I think I was a child.

 

These orbs

when they crash

sometimes split apart

and rip

through the silence of the night

when the men come

to clamorously dip

into the memory

of my life,

what I have become—

this slip

into death.

And I welcome their wail

which now says more than I,

welcome the broken shard’s

conversations with the far, far sky

that I hear has more stars

than the bare eye can see.

But what is that to me?

 

These fingers are well used,

this mouth too

but only the marble to my touch is cool

and porous because

it gives, it gives

and it allows

for me to cover it

complete-

ly in my flesh, in my skin.

Love, love…

How I love that their fragility

does not mar me.

 

But if I find

one day,

that what was mine—

these marbles in a small, small pile,

have become

all broken glass

and press into my palms

and slash from me

my silence

then I will think,

as I scream,

of fleeting dreams,

the echo of daylight,

the memories of childhood,

and that this too

shall pass.

 

 © Coleen T. Houlihan

Published in Spare Change News