Everyone has an admission price.

Eight years ago
She arrived
From France
Clad in black and red
Leather and high heels
White wispy hair
Pinned tight on one side
And wild on the other.
She had no children
Just an abusive man
Of the child bride she was,
Left at once, but never divorced
Life is this way,
And she is straight in it, sweetheart.

Six years ago
She worked all hours
To buy her own home
In all parts of town but local
Maybe in decoration
Or an embassy
She spoke nine languages
But her French was slipping
She had one daughter
Ambiguously aged
Stolen by a man
She hates
She wants family here
But no man, sweetheart.

Four years ago
She worked for Princess Diana
In Inglaterra
She has a friend
He cuts her grass
But she doesn’t care for him
He hates children and animals
She had children
Six babies in her tummy
But she killed them.
That’s how she says it,
In tears every time,
Because she couldn’t afford
To send them to the fancy schools.

Two years ago
She was a nurse,
And had one granddaughter,
The paramedics asked her age,
Her sunken eyes shifted,
Spiderweb hair drifting
“Fifty-eight.”
Her loose-skinned fingers
Tightened in finality
Fifty-eight, final answer
And we looked at her
And we looked at each other
Trying to decide whether
She believed that nonsense.

Today
Her birthday cements:
She’s eighty-one.
Her husband, divorced,
Has been buying her home
In her name, as a gesture of kindness
She complains hitting her daughter
Somehow drove her away
And there’s another granddaughter
She isn’t impressed
She’s never been to France
She grew up in Portugal.
Twenty-years separated
Not more, not less

Today
She said her friend died
But she drove him away
She screams her age
Is her decision
And her husband is inside
Taking a shower
She didn’t lose her keys
The locksmith stole them
She’s never lost them
She’s never lied
She is straight in life
When everyone else is crooked
Like a gaping question mark

And I’d love her still
But for the high price of admission.