Red Lips | Teen Ink

Red Lips

August 2, 2013
By mistyfoxmaid SILVER, Fort Lee, New Jersey
mistyfoxmaid SILVER, Fort Lee, New Jersey
8 articles 0 photos 2 comments

Pallid-faced with mud-colored hair - she definitely is cooking in her own sweat because there's no AC, but there's still that pasted on smile on her face and those bright red lips of hers open and close spewing out words that she probably doesn't even need to think about anymore because she's been stuck in this place for so long taking orders from customers and from babbling old Chinese coons that can't speak a sentence of English and I sit there waiting for my food and wonder if perhaps she really hates them because I see the tightening of her lipstick stained lips as they babble things to her and perhaps hating herself for understanding them after so many years. But this is coexistence at its best and she'll keep smiling her blood-stained lips, her lips of hard work, her only hope to get out of here some day.


The author's comments:
This prose poem came about when I was with my family at a Chinese take-out place. The owners were speaking in a dialect of Chinese that I was not familiar with and I was just observing the things around me including this cashier girl and I wondered about her history and so I wrote this prose poem.

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