sleepless cougar

the sleepless cougar.
she's the lateshift sorceress at the crackiest all-night greasy spoon in the borough.
her skin like leather and her fingers more deep fried than the perogies.
her cleavage an inhumanly tanned and wrinkly blackhole that only her gawdy streetmarket necklaces can withstand.
she never sleeps, moving mechanically but without grace.
she's steam powered. maybe coal. unthinkable furnace.
her jeans cut from the denim of Plague-era Europe and her top the skinned remains of a helpless sofa she's murdered in the night.
i'd peg her age as somewhere between 39 and infinity.
not so much born as congealed.
prick her and she'll bleed nicotine and old coffee.
she's hard lookin'. and probably hard living.
if she hasn't killed anyone, she's dated a guy who has and it shows.
her eyes and smile are about as warm as the dashboard heater of a 1985 Toyota hatchback in a frozen landfill on a cloudy day.
the kind of woman you look at and wonder if she was beautiful when she was young, but know that she wasn't, which means tonight could quite possibly be the most beautiful she's ever been.
relatively speaking.
she doesn't have a library card but she knows more about processed meat and drunk people than you and your book club combined.
i imagine kissing her neck. i imagine it feeling like kissing a chicken wing and tasting like kissing the skin from a neglected dish of gravy.
i hope she calls.