lovely doe-eyed thing, coltish in your youth and stumbling in your heels across the crosswalk- you glanced back at me as you raised a hand to hail a cab, the hem of your dress (tunic? boyfriend’s shirt?) just barely grazing the top of your thighs.  what was in your stare?  what did you, with your bangles and blush think of the pale dirty girl on the corner?  did you guess that the black smudges on my face were not dirt or eyeshadow but subway dust?  did you notice my triumphant smile at returning to the pedestrian path unscathed, or did you mistake it for drunken stupor or even (imagine that!) friendliness?  your face is a blur, but you’d worked very hard on it and i’m sure it was adequate- outstanding, even, so i’m sorry that i don’t remember it. 

your friend, with her tattoos and studded belt gave the impression that she thought herself a bit of a rebel- but i can tell you now that her pre-ripped jeans won’t fare well against broken glass and barbed wire.  and her boots- fashionably edgy, i’m sure- but no grip for traction in climbing.  she strikes me as the type who wouldn’t get dirty unless it matched her clothes, the type that doesn’t believe in anything until she sees it on television so many times that she becomes accustomed to it, and clings to it for a sense of familiarity.  it’s a front- affront, really. 

…I think some of us climb things just to look down on the rest.