Five monoliths stand,
Look down on the lost lady,
Scattered in leaf litter and memories,
Chased by the faint scream of a saxophone
It's funny
That she's alone.
After night after night on a darkened stage
In a seedy bar
Where it isn't wrong- it's jazz
And life,
And she can wear her skin like a crown
But now,
She is lying in the dirt,
And the only hoots she gets are from owls who dismiss her as no threat
And the only eyes that watch her are wide and glowing and waiting.
Her feet twitch to the muscle memory of a tap routine
Where she stamped her way to a high kick, slide, jazz hands, splits, arms up to take it in-
Now there is only one part of her that still sings.
It's a song of mourning.
Her heartbeat drags its feet along the floor it goes slow
Like the blues chord she never knew the notes to but she heard it in every song.
And she saw it in the smile of the piano player as he winked at her
And she flipped her hair and turned to her audience,
Safe in the knowledge he'd still be there
Until he wasn't.
Wedding bells never mastered the blues
And from the moment of his matrimony every note was too sharp to swallow,
You can't be light on your feet if your heart is heavy
She started looking for his smile in the bottom of bottles
And hugging empty pianos-
It wasn't that she needed him but without him her lungs were empty
And her songs became the warble of shot birds
She started to screech.
Now surrounded by decay
Even her body gives way to time,
Now he'd have to find beauty in between the lines that score her face
And her skin is a crust that is slowly contracting
And she is cooling.
She's half dressed in half heeled nudes
And a **** neglige
And her hair is only half curled cause the trees like it that way,
Her lips lost their red to the tint of blue,
And though she's lost her liner, her eyes are even darker.
She howls herself to sleep in shades of blues,
Writes her own chords across her bones and teaches them to the birds,
Takes their cackles for applause.
They think she sounds better that way,
Broken and drowned in a torn **** neglige.
