Red Cross

Red Cross

by Jessica Rawls

There she is
Ms. Fisher on the steps of the Red Cross
She sleeps there, you know
"The dog who jumps in the sea loses his bone!" she
shouts
We laugh, my friends and I, and swiftly walk by
I notice a tear form in the crack of her eye
I went to her one day at the steps of the Red Cross
She sleeps there, you know
The day after she smelled of shoes
The skin of her face looked as if it were peeled, dried or
fried around her cheeks
Probably from crying
Crying, she pulled me down and whispered in my ear
"When a butterfly is pinned down a stream of time
stops"
I closed my eyes and shuddered because her breath
smelled like moldy
Porkchops
I smiled
Gave her a dollar
And left.
I went home and asked my mother about the woman
always on the steps of the
Red Cross
She sleeps there, you know
She said her name was Vanessa
I thought to myself that Vanessa means butterfly
I heard she was crazy, my mom said
I ran upstairs and called the police,
"There's a woman on the steps of the Red Cross
She sleeps there, you know"
The police went
They looked
She was asleep to the point where she couldn't open her
eyes
It surprised me
Vanessa Fisher
"When a butterfly is pinned down..."
Her stream of time stopped.

The mood of the poem to me is confusion, misunderstood, and depressing because in the poem it says she slept there you know and that is kind of depressing because that means that she is homeless I guess. I think that the poet wrote this poem with these moods because she wanted us to see that the lady that slept on the Red Cross was misunderstood and that confused a lot of the people that saw her.