Prostitute

She stands beneath a light that hums and fades,
Her skin for sale, her silence never paid.
They touch her bones but never learn her name,
And leave like ghosts who feel but none who claim.

The mirror weeps when she removes her face,
A painted mask to mock what once was grace.
Each kiss she gives is just a kind of theft,
A hollow prayer for something never left.

They call it work, but she just calls it death,
A trade of flesh for time and second breath.
She dreams in corners no one dares to sweep,
Where all her screams are drugged and put to sleep.

She keeps her thoughts in pockets full of glass,
And bleeds in smiles each time the strangers pass.
Her heart’s a room with doors forever shut,
Where love once knocked, then vanished in a rut.

She doesn’t cry - the salt would stain the floor,
And no one pays to hear what tears are for.
They want her warm, but never want her true,
They buy the skin, but never see it’s blue.

Each night she dies in slow, repeating ways,
While counting cracks in time that never stays.
The sheets remember more than she recalls,
They hold her breath, her tremors, and her falls.

Her mother told her God would come for light,
But nothing holy walks these streets at night.
She prays with lips too tired to be heard,
And sells her voice with every whispered word.

Inside her soul, a field once bloomed with fire,
Now scorched and quiet, mourning its desire.
She is the wound the city wears in shame -
A girl with none, who bears the world’s old name.