Inked Identification

This is her domain.

Masqueraded by snowflakes in her eyes and gray earmuffs, she could see nothing but the wonder entailed in scripture and hear nothing but the wind chimes and the friends hanging from letters. Tiny, impish friends waving along, hopping off a point to a crushing page number. They tear at her soul, and no one really sees this as she taps her boots silently, madly, in precise rhythm. Her hanging breath tells the story of a blizzard. She sits as the quintessence of a good conversationalist—pure smiles, inquisitive replies, silence that acknowledges, a nice amount of gesticulation, warm body language, a teaspoon of idiosyncrasy.

And when she pouts almost inconspicuously, it drives strangers crazy.

She likes tête-à-tête hellos and how are yous, tries to linger on cliffhanger farewells. She is permissible to air and to playgrounds and to parties, yet she chooses to live with and to live because of her friends of houses and castles and fairies and spaceships. Freckles frame her eyes, and there shines mirth, beauty immeasurable and deep. Her voice, and even her mute entrance, fractures the moment, and isn't she shocking? The long gone tyranny of self-inflicted cruelty is a tiny bit silhouetted around the outline of her body, but it is, she says aplomb, gone—it is only a wry illusion that makes it happen.

And she lives on pliantly in your head.