picture this

Picture a girl. A young girl. You see the back of her. She skips down the crumbling path of asphalt. She wears black shoes and white tights. Her little skirt doesn’t come to her knees and her long-sleeved shirt stops an inch from her wrists. She skips, remember? She has no fear of falling. Tripping never crosses her mind as she keeps her face up. She looks ahead, not down at all. Her hand holds a piece of paper. You wonder if she’s drawn a flower or a heart. Maybe she’s crayon-captured a tiger. As she drew, she bared her teeth. She growled while blackening in the fearsome cat’s stripes. You copy her confidence in keeping eyes-off-the-ground. You affix your gaze upon her skirt’s belt loops. From her pigtails to her paper-clutching hand, your eyes work back and forth. You feel her fall coming when you see her hand rise up to try to snatch some sense of balance. But stability’s a hard act to conjure. And so down she comes. Paper and all. She doesn’t even look at the blood spreading through her tights; she looks at her sheet of paper. She smiles. You see her smile because you’ve now caught up to her. You offer your hand to help her up and she turns her smile upon you. You look at the paper as she places her hand in yours. It’s a picture of the sky. You thank her. You both look up and keep walking.