nochnova sontsa

i went out for a night ride last night through downtown. Everything was glazed orange from the streetlights. I spread across the wide brick layed sidewalks on my bicycle. I paused at the top of a hill on my way home around 1:45. A black homeless woman came up to me, wrapped in a flannel coat that stretched to her ankles. She offered to sing me a song, either one she had written, gospels, the temptations, and countless others i didnt recognize. I chose those she had written herself and she swelled into it. When she sang her lips curved over her teeth. She looked like a mummy, skin tight on bones, features protruding, wrapped in the white coat, swaying back and forth to her own singing. She finished, asked my name, shook my hand. I told her it was beautiful. She hugged me, i hugged back. I gave her my last 7 dollars, she only had 15 cents in her pocket, she said. She told me her name but i didnt catch it. She walked off, i rode home. -WILLIS BIGELOW