Everyone used to see her walking along the streets, stepping through and over broken bottles and glass as she walked effortlessly along without any real purpose or identity.

She would walk the hallways of the hotels and sit in  the lobby chairs, until some self-serving s.o.b. would take notice of her and rather harshly ask her to vacate. And shed rise silently, and gather her courage in a non descript way, and silently re-enter the blackness.  Some of us used to remember little bits about her. A few of us even were able to recall encounters with her, although I suspect they were often embellished.

Many of the local girls used to mock her and laugh, pointing fingers her way and using the harshest of words to describe her and her lonely dancing. Pity was an emotion that rarely shook hands with her. Compassion it seemed had passed her by- or cast her out  carelessly much as her last four step fathers had. After using the bits and scraps of her that they could, they simply forgot that she had a name. A soul. And likely she once had a dream or two of her own. Funny that no one could recall her name. and funnier still that no one bothered to raise an eyebrow when one day she simply wasnt there anymore. Unnoticed, like a trash recepticle that had served its purpose and was itself discarded.

There was a time when I though that I could have loved her, and I console myself with that thought and I justify my own atrocities with words like whore, and tramp- as if they could erase the carelessness that I exerted over her life, possibly over her heart. I never bothered to allow myself to look into her eyes, simply at them. As they mirrored my faces of animal urges, I simply lost my humanity in them as I took the very things everyone took from her, never comprehending the damages I was leaving behind. She would smile weakly and welcome me as I entered and invite me back as I departed, never seeing  what I was leaving behind. Never caring that I was not only invading, I was intruding.

We would ocasionaly make eye contact in the outside world. She would have a wounded, yet hopeful look as I brushed past with another woman in my arms, another feather in my cap that was also another dagger in her non-existant heart.Why was it that I could not recall her name? Her face? Her hair color?Perhaps it was the very same reason that no one could- she was only a spectre.