Pretty Baby

Hush pretty baby
don't you dare cry
your new mama
she will poke out your eye.
One day
warm comfort stolen away
replaced
cold cell
bare mattress
chained to the floor
crying tears
screaming for mommy;
the shock 
glassy eyed
paraded before
auctioned off
to the highest bidder.
Fear builds
constant
can never walk the walk
talk the talk.
Sass earns you a backhand
a needle in the arm
barely conscious
but no one cares
you are meat
a commodity
used
abused
thrown to the wayside
when your uses are over.
Hush pretty baby
don't you cry
your new mama
she will let you die.

©March 6/23

I was Aware Part 2

Pexels Free Pictures.

Let us return to the story of my going early yesterday morning to wash my car.

I zipped in and as I pulled into the car wash this, what I realize now was a cart to hook on the back of a bike, cart was by the door, but I thought nothing of it. I pulled into the farthest bay, closest to the out door, shed my jacket and fed the machine its coin.

I was the only person in there washing their vehicle. As in I was alone.

As I moved around the car, I realized that there was someone standing over next to the entrance door for both cars and people. And was a little startled. I realized it was a man, my heart amped up a little and I looked around to see if there were cameras close to where I was. I have never done this before. I have never worried or thought like this before.

Well that is an untruth as I wrote about an incident during a walk in the summer when I crossed the parking lot of a business to avoid walking passed a man coming towards me.

I am furious that I am having to watch around me at all times and avoid people. I am losing my trust, my faith in the actual good of people and beginning to only see bad. I do not like, nor do I want this to be my outlook in life.

The man at the door exited and I continued to wash the car. I realized that another man had come in. This man continued with his bicycle to a bay one down and across from me. Then the other man came back in. My heart rate amped up at bit. The man across from me was doing something weird with the machine and I was ignoring that.

I usually walk all around the car when I am rinsing it off. But not yesterday. I rinsed part of the car off keeping an eye on both men, putting my back to neither one. I also was trying to figure out if I could wield them off with the water coming out of the wand. I rushed a bit.

As I was finishing up, the guy why had been at the bay down and across from me, was wheeling his bike across and the door went up. Another vehicle finally drove in. Followed by another. The guy wheeling his bay went into another bay down from the side I was in, and was drying his bike.

Despite there being other vehicles in the bay, I jumped into my car and locked the door. Took a deep breath and worked to still my beating heart.

I feel absolutely horrid that I even had these thoughts.

I understand that I need to be vigilante. But I have to admit that I was more then a little unnerved to be alone, in the car wash with two men. Who were not washing their cars, as they did not have them.

Why is it that I would have felt different if there had been two men in there washing their cars?

March 5/23