A Woman Falls On The Street Poem by Katrina Harms

a woman falls on the street

Skin browned to coppery tobacco
doeskin leather
from years of street sleeping
Stained wretched rumpled clothes,
torn baggy flesh sagging
Cheeks sunken from suck and blow
hand-rolled cigarette and half drunken
dawn and midafternoon- the times of day known only
to the truly lost

I see your face, backbroken woman
tough as nails, frail as egg shell
and now it's hers, not as she was
But as she would have been
had she lived
had she remained,
after addiction claimed the last shreds of dignity
but the body stubbornly lives on.

Don't look at me
plead the eyes
of the woman fallen on the street,
hands shaking beneath the weight
of disgrace
An eternity of memories,
frayed and swept away by
street sweepers
She staggers as one wounded and limps
to some unknown place.

I am glad you died in secret.