She was young, maybe in her twenties,
a pretty face, asleep and cocooned in a blanket
in the space between the concrete wall
of the shopping cart corral and
the distilled water dispenser
outside Food 4 Less.
Two carts blocked the foot of her space;
a small sense of security?
What brought her here
to sleep on concrete outside the store?
What drove her from home and family,
warmth and shelter?
As I walked by, no one else around,
I almost didn’t see her. She could have been
newspapers blown up in the empty space.
A person with a story, she had
become a pile in the corner, unnoticed.