She wears pretty black shoes
with a buckle and white ruffled socks
to walk to the mile-end.
She is a patron of many fabrics,
mostly thrifted, often stitched,
but always shifting
as she moves through the streets
a Cubist painting,
as likely to fall in the world
as to fall in the fold
of her own hem.
Her patronage is this,
the business of walking the mile
from Rachel to Bernard street.
She passes by store windows,
looks away in the reflections—
she is only beheld in dices,
the eyes of kaleidoscopes.
She slips into the stores
to see what fits her.
All that will not fit her, though,
is a thing so final and fixed
as a mile-end,
or a starched collar,
a thing you press on and complete
and it is good and done—
so when she leaves,
she will continue walking.
She is always walking,
always walking away
because she is no one’s mile-end girl.