Today was a rainy day, chilly and breezy. I am often greeted with a miniscule uphill walk in my daily trek from the train station to the bus stop. This is usually nothing: I pass by a diner whose large glass windows allow the patrons inside to gawk at any passer-by, there is (what I assume is) a small accounting business, a nail salon, an Irish/Scottish pub filled with tired men in battered sweatshirts and jeans, a bakery, a small market/deli, followed by a relatively empty Thai eatery on the corner. Nothing unconventional happens here.

But today, in the midst of the rain and my umbrella-less self, an old man with a newspaper boy hat and a cane stopped in his tracks as I approached where he was and told me, “You are a beautiful woman.” Though caught off guard, I smiled. Partly out of being polite and partly because that is simply not true.

I am quite the vile human being. I’ve manipulated and lied, broken and abandoned. I have strangled, cut, and stabbed. I am also almost always stuck in a state of despondency, but, of course, the wrong people mustn’t know that.

To them, I am something else and perhaps, it is better off that way.