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

First published in Spare Change News.