She has pale skin- the girl that walks past me. Her legs are a tangle of smooth motions, gliding past the road as if it were ice. She has red shoes on. Bright red. They make the clicking sound I loved as a kid when they hit the floor.

She has a dress on that’s too short, but the good kind of too short. The too short that your mother doesn’t get mad about and your father says you lovely in. It’s fragile looking; green. With a pattern I can’t describe. It has no straps, but she likes it that way. Shoulders are her favorite.

She has just the right figure, and it fills out this old green dress nicely. Her stomach does not show, and the material hugs her chest just in the softest way.

Her hands could calm a crying baby. Smooth, delicate, swiftly cutting through the air as she moves through the world. Her nails go unpainted, which adds to the elegance of her feminine hands. She does not realize how darling this feature is on her.

Her face is a plane of bold, smoothing features. Cheek bones as prominent as an old tune I once knew, which follows dark, sensual eyes. Her lips are an ostentatious pink, which brings out everything all the more. They are like clouds; gate ways to perfect teeth and imperfect opinions.

A widow’s peak that I am slightly envious of leads to a forest of red hair. Red, luscious, red hair. It flies about every which way, and she never brushes it from her face. She just lets it go. A shower of freckles caresses all of these, and she is beautiful.

I name her Maria, because I think it suits her. If she were my child, I would have held her in my arms as I looked up at my husband, tired and dazed, and said “Maria,” just like that.

Maria loves animals. She cat watches for her neighbors for free, and insists it’s quite all right. She doesn’t regret things, and never misses breakfast. Her hair smells like violets. Her mother taught her manners, so please and thank you follows her wherever she goes. Her voice sounds like a church choir- that she happens to sing in every Sunday. Maria is very happy.



Maria cries at night. She cries every night and she doesn’t know why. When she stubs her toe, she curses. Sometimes more than once.

Her father left when she was four, and sent birthday cards. Until one day she saw her mom signing, “love, daddy,” one warm July night. He stopped sending cards after that.

Maria cries at the right movies, and tells people she just loves their shirts, where’d you get it. No one knows much about her, but no one really asks. Maria is very unhappy.



Maria walks past me, and smiles in that real polite “hello stranger, nice to walk past you and not know you” kind of way. I smile back, acknowledging her acknowledgment.

A woman walks past me whom I do not know, with freckles and red hair, a short green dress that’s too short but not quite. She smiles at me, and I smell violets.