Something, Still

Still something

She is, perhaps, seventy-five.
Steel hair hangs lank
falling past the grate of the fire escape
as she brushes and wishes
for something of a breeze.
Her once plaid house dress
faded and worn from countless pressings
hangs on a shapeless body.
Too long alone, too old to change,
she dreams of the house
with the white picket fence in the country
as she watches a gang member flash his sign.

She remembers back
to when this address meant
gentle, refined elegance.
She remembers back
to the park down the block
full of flowers and nannies on a spring morning;
before the park became
the war ground of gangs and thieves,
before the stores moved away and
the jobs disappeared,
before the neighborhood became the dirt
under a street kid's fingernails.
She remembers back to the doors in her building
were all painted a blooming red,
now peeling, faded
as if to match the rest of her world.

Her eyes light
on her geraniums
blooming in a colorful riot
and she smiles,
still.