Once Upon a Time on the Tube in London
Once upon a time, of an evening with puddles watery sunlight and air crowded with a thousand pleasant and unpleasant odors, I stood in a crowded tube car and saw the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She was black with a long neck and high cheek bones. Braids wrapped up in gausy olive. Loose olive fabric hung from her bare, sculpted shoulders. She wore smart khakis over her long, slender legs, and brown leather sandals. She rested her temple against her fist, her other arm still in her lap and on her face, the most pleasing and pleasant smile I have ever seen as she watched her young daughter watch the commuters. She did not look without a care in the world or oblivious. She was peaceful, content. She was herself a quiet moment in the cramped and harried movement of the city.
I often think of her braided hair, her understated clothing, her lithe shape. But it is the perfectly proportioned, appled cheeked mystery of her lovely smile that I remember most. Though I could not be farther from it, when I feel especially crass, blocky, clumsy, and disproportionate, I try to copy her grace and serenity, so marked was it, that I remember it clearly eleven years later and all she ever did was sit in a crowded tube car on a wet sunny summer evening in London.
I often think of her braided hair, her understated clothing, her lithe shape. But it is the perfectly proportioned, appled cheeked mystery of her lovely smile that I remember most. Though I could not be farther from it, when I feel especially crass, blocky, clumsy, and disproportionate, I try to copy her grace and serenity, so marked was it, that I remember it clearly eleven years later and all she ever did was sit in a crowded tube car on a wet sunny summer evening in London.