Scrunchie

Sunday morning is pretty quiet in the Gas Light District,
but she moves with purpose, she is going somewhere.
More accurately, she is going away from some place.
Where college girls might make the walk of shame, she just walks.
Shame is either non-existent or buried beneath a leathery countenance, 
developed by necessity and the futility of circumstance.

Her speed should be impossible.
Thin legs prop up an equally thin body, churning forward, 
lugging chunky black heels that make up half of her body weight.

Without breaking stride, she reaches blindly into her purse and retrieves a single condom.
Step! the wrapper is stripped away.
Step! a flick of the wrist snaps the pale tube to its full length.
Step! she holds the ring at the base firmly in her teeth.
Step! the length of the sheath is torn and away and discarded to the side walk.

With a precision born of pure muscle memory, 
she gathers her thin brown hair into a pony tail, securing with this improvised scrunchie.  MacGyver never misses a beat.

In these short seconds she has refined herself.
In some small way she is put back together from whatever may have pulled her apart the night before.

Composed and oblivious to onlookers and gawkers, she marches on into the dawn.

A number of years ago I went on an Aikido trip to Vancouver.  One morning, as we drove through the generally empty Gas Light District, we passed a woman of the night.  As my eyes were caught by her awkward appearance she began this dance.  It was over in seconds.  As strange as it was, she executed the steps with an air of  normalcy that made the incident more striking.  It was a reminder of the stark contrast between the details of each of our lives.  Often, we miss these details.  Tending to associate with those like ourselves, we rarely meet and exchange with people with such drastically different circumstances.  In that moment she shared with me something that was simulatneously tragically comic and deeply profound.  She pointed back to our own lives the insular tendencies we all have.