Whore

Sometimes I think that in another life I would have been a whore, my crinolines crinkling against men in wainscotted jackets, whiskeys competing with cigars between their fingers. We would have laughed; maybe even discussed politics, and I would have smoked just to show that I was a man, comfortable in the world of newspapers and shoe-shine. Afterwards, I would go to bed with them in creaking beds with faded sheets, on top of wooden floors that vibrated from the sound of the downstairs piano.

Syphillis would have taken a few, leaving me lonely, with less money to spend on silk, as the diseases of sex and dissatisfaction ravaged my face the way men ravaged my thighs. I probably would have wound up a haggard, grey-clad woman, jumping off an arched marble bridge that overlooked a river wound in willows, sometime afte dawn, as men drove by on their carriages, to return to the wives they were afraid to kiss.

But still, what fun we would have had, the slow unbottoning of my dresses, the corsets untying between your fingers, and your body against mine. Standing there, on that river, I do not think I would regret the nights when drunken hands caressed my face like a broken flower; I think I would have smiled at the thought of your palm against my shoulder, and your kisses beading my neck like silver, a color matched in my reflection in the sulky waters, waiting gently, like a bed or a lover, to embrace my dying body.