I meet her on a street corner in Brooklyn.

Turquoise hair, smoky shadowed eyelids,

Dark smudge lipstick cigarette.

She exhales a dragon.

She says she’s dying anyway,

and living, and dying again.

It never ends, like a labyrinth dream

like a myth.

I notice the angry scars on her wrists.

“Did it hurt?” I ask, pointing.

She shrugs and flicks an ash. “Doesn’t everything?”

“What was it like on the other side?”

“Same thing—light and dark.”

Young Nyx ©Angela Bigler 2020

photo credit: DarlingJack Smoke Break via photopin (license)