Driving past Sunset and Vine
I turn in the direction
of a garage sale sign
stopped at the home of a faded beauty
sitting underneath a bright umbrella.
I smiled and gave her a casual glance
looked under a table
then spotted a container,
stuffed with postcards written but unsent,
telling of her life in the forties.
She was younger, left Iowa to become a movie star
one of several beauties invited to the parties.
Served as an appetizer to producers and directors,
who could make her career if she became their lover.
She never found fame and all she had at eighty six
were remnants of those dreams, memories of a better
time; designer dresses, baubles and furs,
now smelling of moth balls.
I thought she had the look, from
her faded black and whites, to be a leading lady,
but she never made it beyond the sidelines.
“Why?” I wondered.
“I held on to my virtue,” she said.
I asked the price of the postcards.
"You can have them all for a dollar," she sighed.
I paid her in quarters and headed to my car
taking her dreams in a old shoe box .
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