Opulent Treasure
(Published in Jubilee City, 2005)

They met outside the east wing of their high school. It was a bleak winter morning. He bummed a cigarette off her. He was almost sixteen and she should have graduated two years before but had a run of bad luck. She was just now trying to get her life back on track. Mike wasn’t attracted to her physically- she looked worn out to him. But they became close somehow even though they didn’t hang out much, he thought she was cool. She was legendary in east Tulsa. He loved to hear her stories of drug deals and prison. He respected wildness and her commitment to it. He could go there but he couldn’t stay. He loved to hear the stories from those who did. She told him how she had got strung out on speed and lost her baby. She said it was because she shot up. Some of this just went in one ear and out the other. One day she drove him to the trailer house she shared with her mother. They smoked a big joint on the way. They pulled up to a tan and white trailer home, they go in its neat and tidy, he follows her into a sunny bedroom, he thinks they’re going to have sex. She lays face down across her bed. He lays down next to her. Her bed feels hard. She asked him to rub her back. Her back feels bony, her bra was like a belt across her spine. Never the less he was heatin’ up and tried to feel her tit. She pulled his hand away, he rolled to his back rejected and stoned. He noticed the room is full of baby things. New baby toys, a crib, pink, white, blue and yellow stuff all over. Then he sees a picture of a tiny, pale baby in lace in a white frame on top of the TV set. She said, “Yeah he’s dead. They just took a picture of it for me.”