Monday morning

Daylight. Sharp and hot, traffic smoke billowing around. Music. It is so easy to lose yourself in music, to forget the mid-morning workers around you. Grumbling at the first day of the week, still trying to shake off the laziness of the weekend. School buses packed full of children, bleary-eyed, hurriedly cramming for the weeks first tests. It is that confused, hungry time between breakfast and lunch on a Monday morning, and yet, I try to sleep, tossing uncomfortably in the seat, wishing the car would cease to lurch as I grab futilely at my disappearing dreams.

As we near the corner, he shakes me awake and hands me a bag and some money. It is bright purple- the bag not the money- stitched nylon cloth, eco-friendly. But right now I don't feel like it. I get out and he drives off, little black car swallowed up by red, blue, white and green. And smoke. Not clean smoke mind you, dirty smoke, with no smell.

Suddenly I feel naked, standing there in that rush of Monday morning people, in my tight black track-pants and my baby-blue nightsuit with glow-in-the-dark jumping sheep on the front, my hair is unwashed and uncombed and my face is still pimpled with sleep. I am wearing no bra. No bra.