She was sitting on a plastic storage container

On the street corner

It was stuffed with stuff

She looked like a foreigner

Dejected, rough

I’d seen her before, riding a purple bike

She had high cheekbones and tired eyes

A thin frame

In better times she could have been a model

With a flowing mane

But her hair was brittle

She always wore a black hoodie

She was caught in the middle

How could it be

Her male friend drove by in his beat up car – out of the 80s

Smoking a cigarette

Maybe with better choices it could have been a Mercedes

She smelled the smoke

She shuddered

Freezing cold in July

It was all a joke

She paced for a moment around that stuffed container

Her skin crawled and her mouth watered

Up walked a stranger – someone else from the house she used to go to

She put something to her skin and then her lips turned blue

She was thin and finally still again

When the sirens came

She was unconscious but she dreamt of reliving the flashes of her fame

The medic sprayed Narcan into her nose

Two minutes later, one more dose

She was lifeless, packed into the ambulance

I wonder if she’d ever had a chance

She could’ve been a supermodel

Maybe she was and I didn’t know

But she ultimately went after a different sort of glow

And it wasn’t her first time on the corner, sitting on a container with all she owned

What a shame it’s too late for anyone to tell her

How beautiful she really was