you're too young & eager to love

Western-based warm-up thing. Because I was in the mood.

My attempt to sound old-timey makes me laugh.


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The sand controls everything; she can’t keep it from her hair, from her shoes, and it settles on her skin until she feels like a rattler.

“Ain’t nothing out there, sug.” She has sweat behind her knees, so she pulls her skirts up. She smells like him, the man standing by the window, and the vinegar wash she uses to keep the babies from coming. The man changes by the hour – the smell doesn’t. “Only desert and an open sky.”

She’s supposed to look worn, tired from the hot sun and constant sand. She doesn’t – she’s got a red mouth and good thighs and she knows the measure of her worth. Knows how much copper a good cunny can get, so she thinks it ain’t so bad, thinks she’s plum liking her situation. There’s a bed without mites that’s all hers, bread from the baker, and a deal on good whiskey.

“How old are you?” He asks, a little gruff in the voice, working the buttons of his shirt with calloused fingers. He looks like all the legends do, but his questions are common.

“Don’t keep count.”

Getting up, she works the sweat out of her hair, tries to replace some of the curl a day’s worth of labor has removed. Her cheeks are round, and if it weren’t for the scar scissoring across the left side of her face, swooping from beneath her eye to the curve of her nose, she could have been angelic looking. Could have been something else than a two-cent whore. Or maybe not.

“Who ruined your face?”

She doesn’t blink, doesn’t swallow hard, just slips her hands down to adjust the loosened laces of her corset. “We about done here? You didn’t really pay for a conversation, sug.” Downstairs, the men are coming in steadily, booze-slick and easy to service. This is her prime time, and she doesn’t want to waste it on a man with Mephistopheles’ beard, a man who’s aiming to look for a metaphor with every purchase.