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Hometown Beauty
1:45 at night; the train limps down the track, squealing and whimpering like a beaten dog. The drizzle runs hesitantly down the windows, giving the people’s reflection the look of weeping. I keep my tear dammed up behind my lower lids, for now. The train is put out of it’s misery, momentarily, as it comes to a hault. On the platform a skeleton leans on the ‘No Smoking’ sign, briefly illuminating it with the click of a lighter.
Her cigarette spark wavers a little in front of her face like a firefly. Her face is sunken in, limp, lifeless skin is stretched over protruding cheekbones and a once firm chin. The makeup, years ago, so delicately applied is now smeared on like a child’s, half-hearted finger painting. Her arms are bruised and lanky, each scar, a similar story.
Once upon a time, this woman was beautiful. Her skin was soft, her body was healthy and full of life. Once her face wore an ignorant and oblivious smile as she rode around town with the boys who hang out down by the drug store. They told her pretty lies and she giggled and believed. She even thought one of them might marry her, one day. She thought they valued her, that they cared about her thoughts and feelings. She thought they loved her smile. Now she knows better. Now she hides inside her shell and walks around, living dead, hollow and empty. She doesn’t cry, hasn't for years. There aren’t any tears left inside of her. Her skeleton wanders around this small town’s dust, haunting every lonely shadow, selling it's self to the night.
Tonight she sits and looks at the track. She stares and watches as the train leads people far away from her and her hometown, in which she drowns.
