Midnight

Why do you try, try so hard to get past who you are, disguising yourself in prettily painted shawls, red fringe spilling past your full hips, maroon scarf pulling your hair off your face, twisted in a knot in back and held in place on the sides with two shiny, flat barrettes.

Somewhere on the corner---dirty sidewalk, dirty part of town---somewhere on the corner where the bus stop meets the subway.

You think of her, you think of her and even though this city is not her home, it makes you cry late at night as if slipping out of bed and into the blue-black Chicago dark on a bus, on a train down Michigan Avenue would help you find her.

You're chasing a pipe dream, a pretty ruby you'd give anything to wear on your left hand. When you lost it all, you lost it ALL. You lost it twice, and you no longer know what to expect when midnight forces you awake from nightmares that soaked your pillow with tears and sent dull pains from between your legs all the way to your throat and still now leave you with lips pressed together.

You still have that fringe and that scarf, but a year is a year, and you're not a little girl anymore. Drop yourself off at the next stop, check all personal emotion into long term parking. If someone breaks in, you'll come back and see and suppose it doesn't matter, slip in the backseat and make love to the blue-black Chicago sky on the edge of the eclipse.