Simply

She didn’t look like her name.

Rather, she looked like the way an astronomer would describe a night sky, with very specific attributes, very complicated orbital arrangements, involving physics and undiscovered theories.  Perplexing, mystifying, overwhelming…and to render a few letters of the alphabet to describe her in a single name just fell way too short.

She didn’t look like what other people called her…hailed her, shouted out over the crowd noise in a bar filled with people escaping the rain. 

Rather, she arrived with colors that only existed in Monet’s mind…or J. M. W. Turner’s…yes, she was made of the same Crayon box as the rest of us…but at times, when certain light encountered her, when certain backgrounds revealed, she created whole new mixtures.  An artist’s palette.  The sun after a rain storm, the black and blue clouds of a summer thunder, the slightly pale marble color of her skin along the waistline when her shirt raised slightly and I caught a glimpse of her.  She was an American girl, but she possessed colors that I had never really seen…never really knew existed, but hoped that I might see again but never would…sidewalk chalk rained upon slightly.

She didn’t look like what she introduced herself as when meeting new people…more formality, more tradition. 

 

Not like the way she was just beneath that surface, in the same way you can stand on a beach and watch polite waves but know there is a strong under-tow…she never planted red and black flags to alert you to such dramatic unseen forces until it was way too late…as you swam hopelessly against her.  

She didn’t look like her name, but she always responded when I whispered in her ear.  And at other times, when her name was all I could find to say.