she dances

Azure and ostentatious, she sways her hips ravenous and selfish for the attention of those who would soon forget. Nameless, faceless, emotionless. Held back by a restraint spelled by morality, yet their traitor eyes defeat this sordid futility.

The night was embracing her every curve with a sultry aura, in the poetry of motion both graceful and burlesque. She cared not. She was queen, if only momentarily, gone into oblivion by the end of the song, returning to her domicile of despotic poverty.

She knew of this temporal nature, yet she continually returns, every night. To taste that adulation that she so willingly despises, to feel the pain of subservience engulfing her, empowering her, into the pockets of men, and sometimes women, craving for a distraction her agile thighs can draw. She knew it like the wails of a child, or the desperation of a mother, the tempestuousness of a scarlet, and the credibility of a harlot. She knew it like the fingers that glide her every line, the curvature flickering in the electric stars of this urban urbane hell.

They flock to her, giddy palms aching to touch her cold breasts, to sit at her lap and lavish in the debauched claustrophobia of her sullen scent. Every man turned into a limping child, every woman into a ranting whore, and every child lost in the bowels of her livid clenching crowd. She is here for all, and she must return here every night, every cycle, to feed those whose hunger to forget cannot be warded. Those who wish to move in the elegance of her dance, quick, upbeat and blindingly erotic. Sometimes sluggish and slothful, thirsty for a tip.

She returns, in pristine soiled sheets and pungent perfume. Worn-out plastic seats await her avid audience. She spreads out, they will come. Any moment now. They will come in riotous laughter, in inebriated stupor, they will come in bitter hurried strides, and catatonic contemplations. They will come, because they cannot deny me, and I them. They are my audience, I am their goddess, and yet I must crawl on my back to earn their spare change.

For they must pay. I need them to. No dance. No pay.

She is tired, yet her ardent smile denies this. The crests of her heaving breath weak yet warm, the day comes to a close, and she must renew her segue. This time will be the last. A fallacy she willingly accepts. If only to suspend her reality. To forget, as they will too, once she has given her performance.

She crawls on the pavement, tasting the pain and feeling the heat. The asphalt burning her skin, the gravel scorching her flesh.

She must dance, it is time. The music starts again. A song she cannot deny.

Next stop Boni Avenue Station. Thank you for riding the Metro Star Express.



Image from here.