I don’t know what it was I first noticed about her. Dressed plainly enough, she wore simple, form-fitting jeans and a flannel shirt with a green and black checkered pattern. Perhaps it was the clarity of her person, the unembellished form of a woman unconcerned with drab conformity. No, wait; it was nothing so high-concept as that, who am I kidding? I know what it was: her legs.
They were only revealed below the knees, her jeans rolled up just to that sensual spot that lives, too often undiscovered, just behind the bend. There was an elegance to their shape, a smoothness that wound all the way up to her ample, perfect hips. She wasn’t one of those stick-figure girls—no, she had meat on her bones, this one; just enough.
Her hair cascaded in an elegantly sculpted mess, framing her face on both sides with a reddish-brown color that perfectly lit up the hazel in her gleaming, thoughtful eyes. Her nose, a slender wedge that traced a path from her eyes to her lips—oh, her magnificent lips!—was a perfect piece of human sculpture, gracefully twitching and flaring in concert with her startlingly full lips.
Let me tell you about her lips. They wore expressions of every flavor, switching cleanly from one to the next in an orgy of fluidity. Motion and feeling danced together ‘twixt the succulent frame of her mouth, and I could not but admire. When first I saw, they sat pursed in rapt attention, her eyes narrowed in agreement as she listened intently to a short story being read by its author. At its conclusion, her lips shifted into a tender smile, beautiful and ardent, the soft pink flesh alight with gentle warmth, her eyes flashing with intelligence and passion as her expressive lips carved out a delighted and thoughtful critique from the living, pulsing air that surrounded her. To hell with the author and his damned story; this is a reading of her lips.
I ramble, I know. Whatever it was that happened then, I don’t know, not clearly. As a younger man I’d have thought, when she caught me noticing her and smiled, holding my gaze with that rare fierceness only a strong-willed woman can wield, that we’d made a connection, some subtext established, impassioned thoughts exchanged across the distance, carried by the power of a gaze.
But that’s a younger man’s hope, something I stopped chasing long ago. No, I’m content to admire those beautiful legs, eyes and lips from just across the way, and to consider the possibilities of a mind so sharp as hers. From here, everything looks just about perfect. How can it get any better than that?