fire eye'd boy / the girl from ipanema

the sun spills across the pavement. she wears her smile like a summer dress. her giggles are raindrops. sometimes i hold my hand out to catch them but they always disappear. she always knows the quickest routes on account of how much she hates traffic lights - avoids them like the plague. she calls her bass kim. she loves taking the train and eating fast food. she has trouble pronouncing the words 'antarctic' and 'arbitrary'. she has two brothers but rarely talks to them; they moved out early, before the internet was invented, so by the time they settled down and email came around an irrevocable distance had been established. we go over to her parents' house maybe two or three times a year and have dinner together. christmas, easter, her birthday - it's always the same routine. we'd get the bird and prepare the stuffing while her mom would make her signature mushroom soup and garlic bread. once, a couple of years ago on her birthday, she broke down crying on the way home. i stopped the car and asked her what was wrong but she said it was nothing. she dabbed her eyes dry and we drove home in silence. that night i started wondering if she had, at some point, hidden herself, and whether i had ever really found her.