We were wandering around in this little town

(ah the joys of a rural state: the official population was listed as 96. Just 96, not 96 hundred or 96 thousand...96 individuals, each finite and discreet, like a child counting fingers and toes)

so we were wandering,
I was using up film on a cheap camera,

(one of the disposable types - a one shot deal, made to be used up and tossed)

then we stumbled onto this, halfway hidden behind the brushed-up facade of the historic hotel. There was so much care put into the tourist-ready buildings on the main street, and then this. It was like watching a burlesque dancer perform, dressed up and into the act, and then accidentally running into her backstage with her make-up off and her real persona showing. It's a hell of a lot less exotic- the surface isn't polished or pretty- but it's somehow more elegant, almost more enticing, because it's truth.

What truly caught my eye here is surely what will catch yours: the brilliant blue cabinet

(and if you could see the original you would know that compared to that cabinet, the rest of the world might as well have been in black and white already)

and I had to wonder

who had painted it
and why

who had loved something so much that amid the bleakness, they created this brilliant spotlight of care

knowing, as they had to, that it would only exaggerate the dinginess around them; that this contrast, so extreme, could only exacerbate the dust and dirt

what dreams did we think we could excavate
just with our stares

who had needed something so much that they could afford to lavish such love

what thoughts, what hope, what secrets
are painted there?

               ---------                

I had to think again of a burlesque dancer
(a chorus girl with split knickers in cancan line
an outright scarlet woman with a red light
a barmaid in a hotel with a shady side)

one of them
all of them
owning it
so long ago

(it's not as unlikely as it may seem
there were at least a few not long ago
around here that was once part of
the definition of a good hotel)

and this bright blue suddenly seems
so apposite a hiding spot
both for wishes
and for woes

It's a little pretty spot in a life as garish as the next, though this life is perhaps more forthrightly so. There's precious little relief from the meager course of existence, and many here have yet to live enough to know there can be. Many never will: rough homesteads, hard liquor, homemade sweetmeats; births and deaths and blood; drought and winter and fire and floods; this is all they will know. Under this endless sky- a sky that always wins- emotion is sharper, words are blunter, roles are pre- and pro- scribed, life is about survival.

And this is how she survives:

strange rough hands (but the same sharp words),
and a little skip of fear
that, no matter how old the game is,
never fails when night appears

She has to hide her self away, because this is about being who she's told to be, about playing a role and doing a job. It's about being less real than she truly is, and about putting on a show, the same way she paints her face and puts on fancy clothes. She can feel herself slipping away everytime she puts on her gaudy faux gems, and she's not sure if it's gotten harder or easier to fit herself into this faux skin.

and each night, while she gets ready in her dim little cabin, just before dusk
she thinks

< will this be the last time? > because she knows...though she refuses it...that it could be...that this could be the night that he (whoever he will be tonight) goes too far, or hits her hard, too hard one last time         she's been scared before     and she's been hit before      but she'll put it out of her mind   

< it's > she'll tell herself < it's part of the game, part of being a whore >

and she'll laugh at her blunt acknowledgement,
she'll stroke the blue wood one last time,
and leaving her dreams and fears to rest in that cabinet,
she'll open the door,
and she'll turn on the red light