Smoke rises through the thatched roof of her favourite opium den, The Lotus.
“They’re cooking up a fresh batch” she could tell by the smell; that, and the closed shutters, enveloping the opium fortress in opaque night, from the inside out.

‘The House of Death’, that’s what she called it. The Mohenjo-Daro of the living; for although she used, and profited from the drug she peddled, she did not consider her transaction in it, here on Earth, akin to living, but simply resulting in a mound of undying; a mound of the opium-dead.

She smoked to cover up the scars on her mind; the groves on her body, the ones you can’t find; until you lie to her, and then lie with her; cigarette burns on her brown raised skin; a gift from her lover to remind her of the extent of his…love.

Holes, her body was full of it.
her mind too,
and also her spirit.
Just smoky black charred tissue–
craters on the surface of her planet.

Inhabited by the dead,
and those who have none.
Surrounded by smoke clouds,
of opium pallor,
holding no strength,
and representing no valour.

Don’t send the rovers,
no life exists here.
Just smoky black tissue,
stretched over dead dreams;
laid in insidious strings–
where neither start nor end,
is easy to decipher,
on a body so wrought,
and anchored in loss.

She is the victim of circumstance; the circumstance of birth, the circumstance of family, and the circumstance of mirth. She puts one foot through the splintering door, to her favourite opium den, where her mother smiles at her, and asks her to come sit, closer to the fire, so she won’t miss her hit, before she moves inward, to the loving embrace, of her pimp and father, who in his graciousness, will always leave her presents upon her skin.

Holes.