Valentine

Bustle, colour, movement, haze, quavers - pause:
my eyes lock with Valentine's.

A moment's contact,
a moment's decision.
"Will you come for a drink with me?"

The loneliness of those dark brown eyes,
framed with dashes of red eyeshadow (half-rubbed off)
and alienation (still very much there).

(His) words spin (her) past into contradictory realities,
of Russian up-bringing, a time in Cambodia, New York and London,
as her frail, bruised, hands lift a glass of red to
broken, scabbed lips:
the gift of clients who leave every ounce of goodness at the door.

"A Satanist, I'm a Christian, but the opposite,"
as his eyes make me wonder whether something does reside behind them.
The pentagram tattooed on his arm,
is just another breath amidst the confused
messages muttering across his skin.

A child's smile lit up his face,
as he sang his own little tunes to me
across the table in the crowded bar.

Reaching out for gentle human touch,
and jumpy about being tossed aside,
as so many have before:
"Don't check your phone. Just be with me."

The absent listlessness of a sex worker.

The Spirit of Jesus wept inside of me.