The Princess of Dwight Street

The Princess of Dwight Street

Wears a plastic crown

Riddled with the rotting rhinestones of disappointed hopes

and too many memories to remember.

I pass her each morning I walk to work,

At the short stone wall between the church and the street-light;

She sits without fail,

Her face hiding behind an unfolded newspaper,

            Wrinkled and rubbed out,

            the stories of the world underneath car tires and against chainlink fences.

Often when I am home she walks by below my window.

Her body stoops beneath the burden

of layers upon layers of all the cast off clothing

left by those of us still striving to be lilies of the field…

Does she worry too?

Or has her mind fallen to the ground like her eyes,

Following the steady shuffle of her feet?

She walks past as if I am but a ghost,

as if I am dead to her.

I want to tell her that I love her crown,

That I know she is the wisest of all the daughters of kings

Because she cares not

when the whole world thinks her a fool.