story time

the true story of mary vincent
excerpted from the seattle post-intelligencer

i remember being four years old and somebody asking me
what i wanted to be when i grew up
i said, i want to be mother to the world
she lived in the streets spending nights behind garbage cans
and inside unlocked cars
when she was a fifteen year old runaway
hitchhiking down the california coast
she hopped into a truck
i left home to save my life
it wasn't to seek wild times
i didn't know anything about the world
after raping her he hacked off her forearms and left her to die
he served only eight years of a fourteen year sentence
after her attacker got out of jail she froze up inside
ended up living in a deserted gas station
i've broken bones thanks to my nightmares
i've jumped up and dislocated my shoulder
just trying to get out of bed
he died in jail last year from cancer
her prosthetic arms are the cheap kind
using spare parts from broken-down refrigerators and
old stereo systems she modified them
there's all this stuff in the world that's been discarded
if you keep working with it
it will work with you