liliana of the no place

liliana, she's walking down chapoy street, past the block of gently dancing white dresses clipped to backyard wires, it's getting dark in the desert and she ain't a place to dream tonight, she ain't a place but she don't got the hips to carry the wet linens of a man and family, she don't got the calm in her fingertips for all the hanging, she don't know a way to stay there, she's closing her eyes to the setting sun but she knows it won't go away for good, the stray ant hard on a vagrant scent drifting it to an alone unknown, a scent vague and putrid to the rest of the colony, the wing beats of a moth rising high above a quieting world to the glassy ghost light of a star, rising high above the steady pulsing moth littered carnival neon, rising high for it's all it can see, it's all there and won't go away so liliana opens her eyes now, she braces herself against the gaining southerlies, arms folded she leans into it, headed off to rest in the reeds of the san felipe stream, surely somewhere her forgotten home is embraced in a carefully tended coal stove warmth, liliana leans into it with nothing but a persistence of breath, a persistence of the unanswered question of who she is as what she has come to be and surely, come morning, the children bathing in the waters will stop their splashing and see liliana of rags, liliana of the down and of the outs, liliana of the hopeful, liliana paled and frigid grinned floating to the sea