Kay

KAY

She's been in the neighborhood for years.
Sometimes she sleeps in.
Sometimes she sleeps out.
Once her and a guy named J.C. (it's a fact)
slept in his pickup for two years.
They ate out of the grocery store
and used the bathroom at the convenience store
on the corner. Hard living.
They parked the pickup right in front of my place
and sometimes in the night, I'd get up
and see them sitting side by side in the darkness.
I used to wonder what they thought about,
what they talked about through the long night.
Later, J.C. lost his truck
and went to live at the Salvation Army.
He was handy with his hands
and finally got a pretty good job.
I still see him once in a while
but he doesn't live in the neighborhood anymore.
But Kay is still around.
She sweeps up at one or two places,
Sometimes she gets work for a while
staying with one of the old folks in the neighborhood.
She gets by. She goes on.
Transient as a dream but a fixture just the same.
A symbol of something,
something right on the edge of our awareness
but never quite in focus,
a creature of the weather and of time,
a condition of the soul.


Albert Huffstickler

Posted over on Nerve Cowboy