For the Prostitutes: A Poem

by Rachel Thompson

The streets are always visible

Your job is never done

Your hope is a just a word

You’ve never learned to pronounce

I tremble because I can’t understand

I’m scared of you — for you

And you’re just walking the streets

Trying to afford cigarettes and socks

It’s just one more day to finish

And you find a novel in someone’s grocery cart

The world you’re lost in is your own

Did you forget — you are alive

I see a painted shell that keeps walking

My heart bleeds soft blood

You’re heart can’t even be cut

It’s grown thick scar tissue from all the wounds

You don’t even remember receiving

And I feel I’m accomplishing little

When I tell you of Jesus love

His love that understands every cell

That caused His death and our life

I just see lifeless…blank eyes

Your giggle and tight skirt hit me in the stomach

I want to yell and scream and break through

It’s just something I can’t seem to do

The smells must have rotted your soul

And the physical act, any dream of modesty

And you look at the white middle-class

I bet you’re thinking “You don’t even know”

How do you drown out your thoughts?

Who sucked your body of emotion, of trust?

And you don’t have time to talk

You’re working, and you’re so good

So good at convincing yourself it’s just life

While I am being cherished, body and soul

I want you to feel something unselfish in an embrace

And your eyes to shine like they probably did

But we exchange few words

You always have to walk the block once more

I wouldn’t know what to say if you told me

That’s how much I don’t understand

I’d probably cry, I’m sorry

But love has left my heart unprotected

It doesn’t shrivel up like you’d think

It gets bigger and the beat harder to stop

But you just keep walking…

And I want to die for you tonight