Ugly

She was all hard lines and sharp edges. Too much so to have ever have been attractive, but her eyes were warm. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun; and it was with a child’s detached interest that he noted that not a wisp was left out. She wore a deep blue suit, stiff and pressed. Her teeth were very white, and her skin reminded him of a newborn, smooth and unscarred- like creamy milk. In such a setting, she looked all too out of place, standing there in her clean clothes, shiny shoes and straight back. Wonder what she’s doing here. Maybe lost.
The light was fatiguing, shadows casting shade into yards and slanting across rooftops. Graffiti scrawled haphazardly across fences and over walls. The talk of sundry lives existing on the exterior. Empty lives, no hopes, and bleak futures. He knew some‘d’ words to describe this space. Dank, dark, damp . Dying. The street was fading into nothing and not caring if it did so.
The glossy woman was not comfortable here. She smelled of soap and rainwater, and this was not her place. It might be that she was feeling disdain for him. At least that is the word his dad would use. It would be easy to leave, to forget the ugly she glimpsed here, and go home to all her pretty things and back to her pretty ideas.
What did she think when she looked down on him, when she saw him huddled here in this dirty old forgotten place, shivering in the cold? She pitied him, this he could see. Pity he could recognize.
She crouched down so she was roughly at eye level. This is what adults did when they wanted to get something important across to him. It was serious then. She spoke, her voice clipped and abrupt despite her efforts to sound reassuring. He didn’t understand what the woman was saying, but he nodded his head all the same. She murmured some meaningless words in response and held out her hand for him.
He did not take it. What was he to do, she was a stranger. The woman spoke again, softly and without the edge she’d had before. This time he caught the words- ‘father spoke with us, taken to new home, new family. You will be loved’.
Loved. He doubted she knew how much that meant to him. She was someone who’d always been cared for. Always. He looked at her, long and intently. She smiled, and it changed her noticeably. She was telling the truth. She was giving him something precious. And so he smiled back and took the hand offered to him by the kind lady.

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