From a lonely green stem

I stare out into the shadows, which come and go like ebbing black waters, lapping at my feet. My hands clenched tight to my sides, I decide whether to sprint or walk or die. When I run, I shall fall. Down, ripping skin from my palms and my knees, drawing blood from my beaten body and crushing me into the earth. My tears shall soak into the bloody ground but-

I shall laugh until my lungs burn, because the flowers will grow now. They shall feel their way through the misty darkness and push up through the oppressive dirt. They will penetrate the muddy ground and reach up with curling hand-like stems to the sky, never once seeing the sun in their pursuit, but hoping for it, and that is all that ever mattered.

Then, they will blossom. And I, in this shadowy place, watched by fantastically judgmental eyes, will look to them. They unravel their petals, opening up to the world, ready to embark upon their life after being a trapped, tiny seed caged within the ground. I will run among them, on them, they will push me forward, with their colours and their faces turned towards the not always visible sun. It's there, they'll shout. Keep running. Keep running.

The clouds will rage with angry rumbles across the dark sky, but the flowers of the night will grow with the rain that pours forth, and taller and taller they'll grow. Strength in their numbers, beauty in their strength, they will be with me until the seasons change, and we all return into the ground. But we'll be happy with our successes, because we kept running, kept moving forward, never laying down in defeat in the dark rain.

Listen to the flowers as they accept your heavenly tears. Listen to their voices as they travel towards the air above, unaware that life exists, but hoping that something is up there, with instinct their only companion. They live for only a moment here on earth, and you too have only a moment in comparison. Have the strength to feel your way blind as that lonely green stem. Have the belief that you will find the sun and be able to blossom just as nature had wanted.  

Red lights

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Desperate eyes calling for your attention, but not truly wanting it; defiant humiliation, naked embarrassment leaking through every look, every glance. But cold stares hiding fear and expressing false love conceal all, begging to be believed. And the men, they fall for it, like they've been shot by cupids from burning hell, they turn to those with nothing like nothing at all is wrong. Crisp paper makes for morals and all the world is of course reality. 

With God-made bodies pressed up against the glass, they entice what will keep them alive, masters of a desperate trade always to exist and always to be judged. Perhaps with children to feed, they must stand under the stares and look back, strong. Just a tool, a method of pleasure, to be used as if they are worthless, but yet they must be strong. Though even the strongest and the most experienced have eyes that flash with fury at the world, at themselves for standing sentinel to their stupid, sickening profession. Respect is false, love is false, their happiness and livelihoods are false.

All read in a glance, a quick peek through the glass at a pretty woman striking a sexy pose, looking back as if she seeps normality. But under the surface, desperation lurks like a sickening overwhelming disease, pulsating through the streets and through the very hearts of the fearful females. When you've hit the true depths of disaster, where do you go? To the place with the red lights, to the whore's death row.