flickering fluorescence

The black man in the straw hat held his beloved burgundy pride tucked and folded in his breast pocket.

“Good morning.” he said, passing by.

“Good morning.” I said, nodding in reply.

“There’s a man who believes in something.” I told the boy.

Leather heels clicked a dimming rhythm as he took his belief with him.

A wrinkled white-haired woman scowls at me in the checkout line, and I smile, as the dollar meal trash shimmers in swirling cyclones outside.

There is no truth. What we’ve found is truth’s wraith-shadow, its memory, before having changed its mind. We hear the howling silence of its absence. Truth is not the stoic red-suit palace guard, nor the blinding pyrite of dawn’s deja vu.

Truth is mischievous nymph, a red-dress whore spinning a purse through the thick air of streetlight-evenings, fast to spread her pleasure wide, never staying long enough to be held. By four am she’s off fucking someone else, filling her aching hole, and by daylight, she’s gone.

The wrinkled woman genuflects before her meal under phallic flickering fluorescence, while cackling, gap-tooth tramps blow trenchcoat-businessmen in the damp shadows of smudge-color motel rooms nearby.

Above the impoverished, decadent fray, she feels forgiven, aye, dignified. And that’s enough– for most, as scratched plastic reflections stare back at each, between the white flickering.