Outsiders

The Mumbai rain
back-lit by the sodium-vapor lamps sweeping the cityscape
shimmering, gold-hued, majestic,
yet looking lonely and lost 
as that vulnerable hooker
trying to appear bold, audacious
her bruises and scars
carefully painted-up in that gloss
arched eyebrows raised
a cigarette dangling from
obscenely reddish lips,
in permanent pout
or, is it suppressed anger? 
 
high heels
short skirt—
the universal dress
of a young body-seller
first recorded by a French poet
as a restive flaneur
standing quietly, nearby a vagabond and his skeletal cur
on that deserted stretch, being watched. 

Waiting, yet not—for some rom-com ending or, a Disney-world 
Cinderella outcome, happy for the bourgeois viewers in their 
costly apartments or, perhaps—for a modern miracle in a cynical 
market, that may or may not happen, in real-time!


Published in https://www.verse-virtual.org/