Your fingers brush the mirror, as your hand falls to your chest; your scars lie white against your skin as you listen to him dress in the cheap hotel bedroom beside the bathroom. Your hands are wet from the water at the sink: you've washed and washed and washed but the blood won't come off, along with the dirt under your fingernails.

Your eyes are dry, but (despite the color) they seem very very dark. And when you heard the bedroom door slam, you continue staring into the mirror (not daring yet to blink) and feeling dirty and unclean against the tiles (not daring yet to breathe.)

And at the bedstand lies your paycheck, which seems small for what you've done. Your heart is still (not daring yet to beat) and you leave the room without a glance behind. Tonight your trick has paid at the desk, but they whisper behind their hands as you walk (or rather stumble) out the door, pointing at the smeared makeup and the stringy, darkwashed hair.

You make it outside (only barely) and collapse toward the Burger King, eating for another night and another hotel key, another set of hands grasping at you, another wish that this time it will feel like love.

The pop can you clutch to you with your (still so bloody) hands is spiked with a drug to make you unresistive, and you take a long hard swallow so you won't feel anything. Your next (who spotted you alone) walked up and asked you straight up how much. He's pushed the price down because (so obviously) you're not worth quite that much.

It doesn't matter, does it, because when the drug takes hold his hands pawing at you don't feel so bad and you can turn your head away so easily and pretend you're somewhere else. You can pretend, if you try, that you are far far away from here, living in a house with someone beside you when you fall asleep at night and hands that blood comes off of.

And it doesn't matter, because as you slide the needle into your arm (feeling him watch avidly) the drug has long since burnt its path through your mind and tommorow you probably won't remember and tommorow there will be the money to keep and you may (if you're lucky) you may be warm. The money is everything because you've long since learnt that the Jon'll be gone in the morning and there will be another set of (faceless) hands to claim you when you're alone.

So as your body goes limp, giving you into his sweat soaked grasp, and as he drags you somewhere no one will ever think to look, you don't try to think about what will be happening soon, what will happen to you night after night after night until you're finally free.

But even as you resign yourself to whatever act he'll pay to have preformed, you close your eyes just for a moment and wonder, what if this time it feels like love? For a fleeting moment, for a fleeting tiny hope, you wonder just what if.