Bag Lady Gone Glam Badly

She was hiding in her own shadow, that’s how I remember her. Ashen-faced and cold, which I know because she touched me. And it was strange, because it didn’t feel strange, and I wouldn’t ever usually let anyone touch me, let alone a someone like that.

I couldn’t see the barman because the bar was too low, but I ordered something to drink and as I turned I caught her crooked smile. I smiled back, slightly, and turned to go when, as I said, she touched me.

The barman must have shuffled off because I got the sense of being alone. She was breathing quite hard and squeezing my arm - my arm was where she had touched me, you see.

I nodded as she talked, it seemed the easiest thing to do. She said she was alone. Said she had had some love but that this some love had gone away.

I had to pull away in the end, she become quite terribly loud. She said she couldn’t be alone “no more”, and begged me to let her touch me more.

I never went back there, though I wouldn’t run into her now. They found a body, in the river, the next day, it had jumped. I presumed, and still do, that it was her.

~ by Lucy Lowe on 31 December, 2007.