Her habitual breath keeps time with the knocking of poverty's stern fist, a metronome unwanted.
Her spirits wane with the sun, an expected, painful phase of her broken crescent heart.
She spreads her tarp and patchwork quilt beneath the street lights and dead stars.
She prays by night that if she chance not to wake, then Christ the Lord her soul to take.
Each Dawn she wakes the cold world she had hoped to leave only hours before.
She folds her home and trudges along, each step longer than the last.
A coffee mug empty still, stretched forth to relieve passersby of the burden of their pocket-weight.
She considers resigning beneath the sod, but does not have the means to do so.
Summer 2010
A day in the life of a beggar.
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