this is advice from an old woman who
loved too much, then too little,
then retired from the funny business
of dealing chips of hearts to gamblers
who never won and never lost on her table
but simply took the chips away to bet
on the roulette table's only piece of green.
yet the little round thing always ran
too much, or too little, always landed
on red, red, black, black
and wouldn't you know it,
they lost those chips every time.
it was her job to deal out those chips,
there was no other way for her to live,
she needed the pay and something
to occupy her mind and her hands.
working meant less thinking,
less regret, less hate and God,
take me away from here.
at night, her crying composed of
dry coughs and her head
not composed at all, her hands bang
and slide softly against her loose thighs,
unconscious movements
to smooth out her age,
one hundred touches for each minute
that has passed, plus interest.
if you can, imagine this scene without sound.
this old lady's world has no sound.
her naked body, preserved in this jam of years,
smeared across the beds of many past lovers
and men, strangers and even stranger strangers,
lies, unmoving, on her wooden floor, no longer
glossy, now
separated, empty
splinter ghosts pulling her flesh in under by her weight
in by her dense cloud of yesterdays collected
in a penny jar filled with pay, chipped heart bits
tips
from the nicer customers who never understood
why they had come to this place to gamble
what little left they had sheltered in
their sweating hands, nervous with hope,
a guilty pleasure all on its own.
but she knew why they came,
living in their sleep the times that never change,
to take a half breath between drownings,
to elongate the process of dying to prevent
the final act
whereupon
one lies in a wooden home, quiet and still.
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