Friday, May 17, 2024

A bad penny Nov. 8, 2013

 

 She basks in sunlight

 like a delicate flower,

though she is neither

 delicate nor a flower,

her bloom full of thorns

for the unwary,

they keep her safe

as exotic as the place she flew to

to escape

now must return to a place

thick with the starkness of reality,

trading fuming volcanos

 for cancer-spewing smoke stacks,

 the gray shroud over a stark skyline

she had assumed beautiful

until she saw what is really beauty

in the high reaches of the tropics

she must leave,

 this journey to this remote place

to put distance between what is

 and what should be,

 the intensity of heat

a pale reminder of what

she had once and can’t get back,

no matter how far she flees

 she must always return,

 like a bad penny

stuck in the guts of

 a supermarket coin machine,

 she can’t even spend

it on anything,

and must be absolved to keep it.

 


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