Meticulously maintaining
Impossibly feigned nonchalance,
Toying the cigarette ever so slightly
In her fingers -- careful so not
To appear as too calculated
The pariahs parade the dancefloor,
Shades of ignominy culminating in a
Prismatic rainbow, heightened by
The stale odor of booze and body heat
Still, she stays in her perch like a silent sphynx
Waiting -- watching --
Aimlessly, but with direction, such
Carefree flamboyance below her,
A stoop to which she’d never deign
And so she watches, resigned
To fate, as much a fixture in the joint
As the gilded barstools --
The closest she can come to confronting
The fact that she is no different
Than any of the rest