THE WRONG PEOPLE
Candice James
Copyright 2009
Rain streaking down a dusty window
Plays with the dirt in a paned wrestling match.
Life peeps through this muddy menagerie.
A snowy woman is walking hand in hand
With a midnight man packing a child on his back.
These are the wrong people.
They shouldn’t be in charge of these scissors
They use to cut their way through
The wrong side of town.
And the kiss of spring in winter
Is falling through summer’s embrace.
The alleys and dumpsters, hiding their secrets,
Loom like scrap metal scars and broken robots.
Danger and death have become clandestine lovers
Lurking stealthily in the shadows
Waiting for the wrong people
To scissor step their beleaguered bodies home.
The horizon is only slightly visible now.
The child on the midnight man’s back is softly sobbing.
His tears become part of this relentless rain they’re caught in.
The snowy woman caresses the child’s fevered forehead
And presses her cold cracked lips to his burning cheek.
And the kiss of spring in winter
Is still falling through summer’s embrace.
The wrong people never do the right things.
They never escape the frosty side of living.
They were cursed at birth to walk the earth
Searching for dead glory in a nowhere place.
The snowy woman knows this.
The midnight man’s face shows this.
The child’s eyes are dulled with fading hope.
The kiss of spring in winter
Has finally fallen through summer’s weakened embrace
And the wrong people never even felt it’s touch.