Flowers For a Stranger: A Monologue
By: Pixie
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Once again it is Spring and the dandelions are rearing their ugly heads. As always in Spring,I see her in the park every day. Sitting on the same concrete bench, her wooden cane by her side. She sits there hunting the pigeons with her eyes, pegging the fat birds in the melon with her stale bread. I have seen her so many times now I've named her. I call her "Mildred". Everyone else who walks through the park merely passes her like she is a statue or fountain, simply part of the park. I see her in 3-D. She must've been beautiful once. Her eyes are flat and lifeless. They have no discernible color. I think once they were a dark blue. The sun makes her hair an odd lavender shade. It was black once, her arched eyebrows are still dark with grey in them. When I walk by I smile, she nods her head to me. She has a crinkly face. Like an apple doll or a Shar-Pei. She's like crumpled typewriter paper. Her skin is thin. There are freckles on her cheeks. She keeps her shoulders back. I imagine her walking around with books on her head as a young woman,expounding the merits of grace and good posture. I,myself,slouch. Until mid-May she will wear a purple coat. It's not "purple-purple". It's a brownish-purple. I think that color is called "mauve" but I'm not sure since I don't remember mauve being in my Crayola box. I know her lipstick is sienna, her eyeshadow is robin's egg blue and her blusher is flesh. No ones flesh is actually peach though. I've never seen a peach person but that's what color her cheeks are. She wears the archetypical old lady shoes, orthopedic issue brown with three rows of eyelets. Her stockings, most likely, are thigh-high's from Woolworth's with the white elastic garters I found in my grandma's drawer of "foundations". After mid-May she wears tennis shoes and ankle socks on her solid legs. If it is breezy she wears a blood-red cardigan over her skirts and blouses. Red is a poor color for an old woman. It looks garish and cheap. She must be lonely. No one ever comes with her to her private bench. Every warm day until late September, she sits alone and eats her sandwich. Today I have a surprise for the bench warmer I call Mildred. It is a corsage of pink carnations and daisies. It will look good on her coat. A corsage is an odd thing for a woman to give another woman but I want to see if she still lives outside of bread-fed pigeons and warm sandwiches in a park. Besides, it's a nice gesture, flowers for a stranger. I walk up to her with my hand in the tote bag I carry and hand Mildred the clear plastic box with the corsage. She smiles and I see two tears in her definitely slate blue eyes. I run. She doesn't follow. |