The Orphan

Lying on the rusty metal bed springs, shivering in her abandonment,

Her mind struggles for light, for compassion, for love.

She turns her neck on rusty hinges to face the graying smoggy sky,

Consumed by their greed, their pride, their exploitation.

Her lips blue cracked canyon walls with brown scab rivers,

She opens her fragile mouth for the last time

And coughs out her gray deserts of unspoken pain.

She opens her eyes and unleashes the waters

Of two cloudy yellowed lakes,

Tainted by trauma, her innocence surrendered to pride.

Her emaciated, spider-leg fingers crawl across her skin

As brittle sulfur fingernail peaks tear away at

Dried butterfly wing wrists.

Color. Oh what color!

A pure ruby river bursting through the dams of deadened veins

To bring vivacity to an ashen world!

A relief to this monotony. A savior.

No...A demon.

Polluted lakes, polluted minds, tainted blood, tarnished dreams.

Impure, so impure.

She was beautiful long ago,

Her skin, so unlike a shark's tail.

No scars, no deep crags etched into a flawless landscape.

Such glowing life was drained from her veins,

Such glimmering starlight extinguished from sapphire eyes!

And at last, she is again something pure

As she turns to the graying smoggy sky,

Returning to the color it should be:

A pale blue that holds life and death in its hands,

That holds the world.

She's pure once more, dear.

But old wounds never heal.