Reclaiming life

 

She sits, nails bitten to the quick.

Fear chiselled into eyes. He places

his heavy hand upon her thigh,

bruises hidden by time,

grips a little too tight, a wince.

He grins through

cigarette-stained teeth,

faint smell of alcohol.

A scent of death lingers behind him,

as if no good can ever orbit his world,

as she flinches away, instinctively, no fight,

letting her thoughts fly to another sky.

 

Will she, one day, say 'no more'

depart on a different bus?

I wonder, if she knows she can escape

to somewhere beyond the pain, through

the grey slate rain that has poured for days.

 

In hope I pray she runs.

If any deity is listening,

grant her strength, I say

under my breath.

But faded, distant gods

don't ever listen to prayers

when you whisper them

to the shore. For she is sure

he will change when the wind

diverts its course.

 

He leers at the girl

walking the concrete,

through beer-goggle vision.

Fourteen, can't be any more,

and I'm shocked to my core.

Can man fall any more?

And outside lightning glares

through the atmosphere.

An angry god, I think in hope.

And in the strobe lighting

I see enlightenment, frightening,

this is no man, but a demon

in the flesh, drooling as he stares.

 

She sits nails bitten,

no claws to scratch back.

But she looks into his eyes,

sees nothing inside. Nothing worth

a moment of time. No love, no hope.

Just oozing slime of a demon mind,

and she screams inside. No fucking more.

She hands him back the keys to his flat.

And walks into the night.

 

And I smile under fluorescent station light.

And say well done, stay strong.