Surfaced

Surfaced

A woman yesterday, hair bleached blond and pulled atop her head,

Wearing a cheap red sundress and flip flops.

She isn’t near what could be called a home.

Just industrial wasteland, littered with glass and barbed wire protected

Empty lots.

Protecting themselves from what?

The tent city down the hill, that keeps growing.

Taking city streets, forcing us to witness, smell, feel,

What the long fermenting crisis looks like.

That intersecting tangle of American trauma.

Back to the woman.

Her hair is evidence that she wants to be pretty.

I think about what type of attention the simple act of dawning a feminine aesthetic

Must garner around here.

Her face is a testament to that.

Twisted permanently into an almost sob.

I imagine that feeling in her chest,

Under the surface of her skin.

Twitching muscles this way and that,

Existing so long unchanged, unheard, perhaps even unsurfaced,

That the landscape of her features was forever changed.