How We See Others

It was the first time
I had pawned anything
in my life.

My ruby ring,
a gift from my husband
before he started to beat me.

When I entered the pawn shop
everyone looked at me,
like they knew who I was.

Their eyes saw the same
pale-faced individual
with the sunken eyes

and boney physique,
they had seen
a thousand times before.

Their minds associated
the image I projected with a junkie
who was probably a whore.

I hated the looks they gave me
and the meaning in their eyes,
but I had other things to worry about.

Like the taxi waiting for me outside
and its meter
rising as swiftly as my temperature.

Embarrassed, but trembling
with the fever and pain,
coursing through my body,

I quickly negotiated fifty for the ring
with a payment of seventy in three weeks time,
before the ring was lost to me forever.

Outside, I paid the driver
and he finally took me to the hospital
where I had a biopsy appointment.

You see, not all people
who frequent pawn shops
looking down and out,

are junkies.
Some of us really are
in poor health.

Some of us,
look like shit
because we have leukemia.