My Lady Day

I know a girl who is sad but sad is not all she is she is quick to laughter. Her eyes that see so much and turn away from more fill and heavy with tears, her hands clutch thighs and then air and then thighs and I do not know her well, but I watch her.
She is worth watching. She is beautiful. I love to look at beautiful things so much, that I feel sorry for the most beautiful people because they cannot see the beauty that they are. They live inside their faces and their bodies and if they are the most beautiful thing in the room, they have a less beautiful room to look at. She is one of those, so pretty, yes. And yes. But she is also one who loves beauty, who knows its importance, how it is vital to a soul and beating heart. She gathers it around her, it follows her down street corners and into alleys and in and out of buildings. I brought her a gardenia and she put it in her hair and wore it all day long, even when it was done being creamy perfect loveliness, even when it hung its head, because the smell, the scent of lemonly honey still floated around her. She was her own garden today. She knows lovely is in the nose and in the hands just as well as lovely to the eyes. And oh she does love lovely.
She is a room with red curtains. She is a bath poured hot. She is a sip that burns. She is a ribbon on the ground.
And what I love about her is that she is real. She makes mistakes. She break a heart. She take your book. She make a joke. She dance like crazy. She sweat and smell. She will not trust but trust the wrong ones and in doing so she breaks her own heart. She is her own joke. She may fall and blush, and fear what people think. And right she is, I think, to fear what folks may say because folks tear down the pretty ones and god forbid you miss a step, oh they love it when you miss a step. Part of her thinks, I think, that when she falls or jokes fall flat or her too drunk just proves that she is not as fine as she could be. But it is her blush that makes her fine.
She sees too much and feels too much and takes that back inside and worries it worries it worries it. To get the answer out. To get the honest out, the real thing, the key. But she is not that serious. But yes she is. But she is both at once and that is the true thing.
I don't know why she compares herself with perfection except that we so many people do it. Once I said of myself that I knew that I was pretty, I was just not my taste, and perhaps that is how it is for her. I do not know, I don't watch her that closely. It's not my place. I admire her, that is all.