She crossed the Canal Street concrete corridor and stopped at the doorway of the crowded Lake Vista bus. Her long, oiled and tightly pulled back hair glistened in the May midday sun. Is that oil or perspiration on her protuding forehead? Her skin! It is so ... black!

My eyes followed her as she slowly joined the other commuters. Bulbaceous lips curled back to reveal large strong white teeth. She paused in the aisle. Her disposition seemed troubled. Her eyes! I can't stop looking at her eyes. They didn't scan her surrounds but rather looked through them ... to another time, another place. She moved from one side of the aisle to the other. What is tormenting her?

I expected her eyes to be reddened ...but they were not. Look at her eyes! The whites of her eyes are so ...pure! Her pupils! Are they dilated? No. Pupil and iris merged as one to make deep dark disks sitting in a field of intense white.

What is she saying? As she prowled the aisle she uttered something about flesh, temptation and sin. She's preaching. To whom? Her crazed utterances were a mingling of religoius wrath and secular retribution. Her sermon was not for the benifit of the commuters ...it was directed at her self. She is scourging herself!

Who has crossed and discarded her? She alights from the bus at a stop that matters not. I know that what I have just been privy to is a ritual, an incantation, a summoning of ...
I pity that party that has forsaken her!

David Stoeckel. May 2001.

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