From Word To Word

I was on course in Toronto last week, and I was amusing myself by writing short character sketches of the people presenting in class.  This is something I often do to pass the time, and I thought I might share a few.  As a point of clarification, the fact that most of the sketches are of women has nothing to do with my preference for subjects and everything to do with the fact that women vastly outnumber men among social workers.

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She stands with her shoulders high, protective, as if she has been fearing something for so long that her body knows only to be fearful.  She is protecting her beauty, I think, because it frightens her, because she is not sure of what it means.

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She wears brightness at her wrists, and her hands flutter about her face like the wings of birds.  She holds herself in her hands.  She dresses her hands in brightness because this is where she knows herself most fully.

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He is a memory of himself, of a former time, when he was as strong as he wanted to be, stronger than he is now, remembering.  He is a yearning for another self, a yearning out of time.

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She is tall already, and thin, and angular, and she pivots her still taller heels, making deep but ephemeral divots in the carpeted floor.  She turns herself around these points, swivels, like a spotlight, brings herself to bear on everything in its turn, brings her sharp hips and her sharp jaw to bear, fixing everything in its place.

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Her lips are pursed, and her head cocks from one side to the other, like a chicken, plump, abrupt, wary, and awkward.  She leads with her head and chest and belly.  Her arms and legs trail behind behind her, afterthoughts, appendages, the tentacles of a jellyfish.

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She is freckled browns and bronzes and greens.  She is like fall leaves, like sun-speckled through fall leaves.  She is autumnal, brightly and frivolously autumnal.

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She plants her tall boots, her tall black boots, shoulder width apart, giving the lie to her pretty patterned skirt and her ponytail.  She is stronger than she wants to be, than she wants others to know, than she thinks a woman should be.

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She is round-hipped and round-breasted, maternal and libidinal: a body that is before all else an embrace.

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She is affably porcine, a well-groomed and well-trained sow, something to be shown at the fair.  She is a sow in pleated pants and thick glasses and bobbed red hair.

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She has a sadness in her mouth, a sadness rounded into itself, a sadness closely held.  There is a beauty in her sadness, though, a real beauty, a beauty of dark eyes and full mouth and small breasts and round thighs.  It is in her sadness that she finds her beauty.