Exit Stage Left

'Stage' ~ 1992, by the Skinny Little Blonde

Sometimes he doesn't seem so happy
Like His World is super small
A tattoo upon his shoulder
He seems so much older
With a cross upon his brow.

This is a short piece I wrote some 15 years ago & for whatever reasons, I saved it.
It was about a guy I once knew... a musician, a husband, a father, a prostitute & friend.
At least those were the things he was when I knew him.

His wife, who became his ex-wife when his best friend was done with his tour of duty in the middle east, was an interesting lass.

They were constantly broke & by government standards, they lived in poverty. Together, with their absolutely beautiful 3 year old daughter, they lived in a small room in his grandfathers' house. The room was large enough to accomodate one twin bed & all of their worldly belongings, which his wife kept articulately organized.

She had a vision & she had a craft.

She would go the Dollar General and buy masking tape, two rolls for a buck. Then, she would walk around back and take a dip in their dumpster. there she would find a sliver of a box, in which she would tuck lots of other broken down boxes. She had a thing for cardboard.

At home, either in her family's room ... or outback on the concrete pad, she would whip out her blade and begin cutting, folding, notching and taping.

You see, outside of the twin size mattress and boxsprings, which sat on the floor, and the hand-me-down clothes... she had no material goods, certainly no other furniture.
But out of cardboard & tape, this girl built a desk and an armoire, a laundry hamper & shelving units.

In the Dollar General dumpster one day, she came across some toss pillows that had apparently been sliced wide-open when employees had cut into the fright box they came in. She grabbed the pillows & runted around for a good long time in that dumpster. Finally, her head popped back up. "I found it! The Perfect Box! See...it's thick & corrogated! I can work wonders with this!"

Several days later, I got to see her completed work... a pumpkin turned into a carriage. With a spent pillow stuffing mattress, a high headboard covered in sliced pillow sleeve butterflies and a canopy top dangling even more butterflies...she had made her baby girl her very own custom sized bed.

The sight gave me butterflies & the memory still does.