A young Latino woman,

With a square-shaped face

Swaying like a metronome.

Her char colored hair flipped over her eyes,

Drooping down till the middle of her back.

She held onto the handles in a rundown bus.

The white, dried crevices of her knuckle became apparent,

Against the honey-brown color of her skin.



The sound of her bagged groceries swished around

And the sound of her teeth clicking filled the empty bus.

It was frigid,

Each snowflake brought a new wave of shivers,

With more regrets and feelings of sorrow.



No one was there to see her goose bumps swell

Or to see the hair on her neck stand up.

No one was there to see her put her food stamps back into her book bag,

Or to see her ribs sticking out of her faded blue sweatshirt

Or to see the lonliness

Filling her eyes as she shed a tear for what she wished was the last time.



Her diamond nose ring stopped gleaming,

The edges of her mouth collapsed

After trying to form a smile for seventeen years.

Her veins popped out as they called out for another fix.

The tears in her jeans kept getting larger and

Her book bag kept getting heavier.

Her stomach kept on getting flatter and her skin tighter

As they started to hug the brittle bones supporting a body built on nicotine and chemicals.



She remembered the cadence of her hips,

And the drumming of her feet,

And the songs from her lips.

But they were locked up in a harbor

Which was filled with the memories of a long forgotten past.

She had never let that harbor open

She never will.


Her eyes were hard,

Bleak,

But still had that glimmer of amber rock.

That was all she had left.




It seemed as though life ate her up from the bottom up.

Her legs and feet died out early,

She destroyed her torso a little later,

And her shoulders soon started to slump.

And she smoothed her hair down as she waited,

Waited for the rest of her body to become—

Nothing but numb.