In My Mind's Eye

Black Coffee Boulevard

She likes her coffee like she likes her ex-lovers:

Bitter.

Sometimes she cries, for lack of a better reason,

Just to watch the mascara-laced tears roll down her cheekbones,

An inky. black. warning.

The scar tissue marring her heart, a vestige of a long lost ache,

Callused into the exact kind of prickly, flaking skin she just itches to pick at.

And if she's going to be perfectly honest,

On this boulevard which she so quietly treads,

Dodging still-sizzling cigarette butts with nimbly-natured feet,

She has no idea of her final destination.

Because at some point in our lives,

We are faced with a choice,

To either relinquish a dream that is labeled by many as,

Unattainable, ineffable, and outright foolish,

For a stable career in a mere office building,

Where the linoleum floors smell like bleach,

And she begins to wonder if there's any around to drink.

Or to instead throw caution to the ever-raging wind,

And risk a life of squalor,

Living among the sewer rats in a dark alleyway that,

In some gorgeous way,

Seems to be frozen in time among a ceaselessly bustling world,

And where she is neither number nor name,

But a collection of words flowing forth from her pen's ink,

The voice of a girl never heard,

Never seen,

Never felt.

A voice that will die with her.

She liked her coffee like she liked her endings:

Dark and hard to swallow.

And for a girl who wanted nothing more than to speak,

Being forced into silence is the the most bittersweet death of all.