WOMAN OF THE RED DUST

Prelude

Beauty does not make a woman a goddess.
Your first experience danced around that belief,
your aching muscles contracts to exertion.
Her sheepish smile; led you
to the transparent security of flannel sheets
And blood stained duvet.

You met her chaste, behind the security of four brothers,
walls against boys playing at being men.
Time chipped away at your new found love,
the last time you saw her was under the frenzied thrusts of a man she calls father.

Introspection

Of all the lies you told yourself,
the one that stood out the most,
with a cheeky grin and crimson stained hands whispered;
Love is a sore, time the band aid.
Somewhere in the loneliness of your painful past,
your lover’s needy hands is rejected by a disgruntled partner.
An angry man cries into her pair of tired breasts;
sound of broken piano keys, an orchestra of pathos.

Red light district

You sink into the sighs of an old lover with a new face,
maybe a new lover with old memories.
You won the war of ex-lovers and bled crisp banknotes in the bargain,
a creaking bed, stained polka sheets and discarded condoms of men who came before you
became witnesses to the reunion old lovers.

She traced her fingers on your back and recounted
stories of other men, digging for gold in an empty mine,
looking for treasure maps on her well-travelled skin.
She whispered to you as you slept “I now belong to the red dust.”

The aftermath

The next time you saw her,
she was sleeping peacefully, cradled in the hands of her last lover.
You knelt on her marriage alter, holding flowers and regrets,
her gravestone had no epitaph.