I feel your echo in me

And it makes me want to cry
for all the people out there doomed to be
Just like you

It is old
Sexless street person
Aged by a million things
a spot on the glitzy façade
of the Atlantic

Stretched out mouth open
across the casino bench
Her life tucked neatly next to her feet in a worn
black bag

Tourists’ chatter and laugh,
and sit right next to
her.
She is nothing.

Flies buzz around her gaping maw
landing on her face
And the tourists natter on
unnoticing.

”That women on the bench over there,
I don’t think…she’s not breathing…”

Casino rent-a-cops
laugh and brush it off
It’s perfectly safe to stop breathing to minuets at a time

Delving into what I hate
most about myself
I brush it off
It’sNotReal
Just keep walking.

Too scared to just walk up
and shake her
Terrified of touching her
of contracting some vicious
disease

15 minuets later lights wailing
silent
AtlantiCare Ambulances
arrive

I join the crowd rubbernecking
With Philly tourists in for a weekend
of drunken gambling

Praying that she won’t get up, that
she’ll faint, that she will be forced into the ambulance
But she rises
She stumbles sickly on her bandage swathed
feet
Faltering protests of
I’m ok
She stands with her head hanging shoulder’s slumped
Shit stains down her legs and surrounded by flies
she staggers away

The crowd fades
back to blissful ignorance

Leaving me wishing
I was strong like you