She stared at me through her martini glass sans embarrassment.
Held to her eye,
resting against her brow like a pillow,
the bubbles of her drink flowed around a blown-up look,
morphed by the material.
Brown hair pulled into a clip behind her left ear,
her gaze unnerving, solid to the chaos of the bar.
She seemed to know exactly what or whom she was looking at.
Me.
The kohl in her waterline made her stare an intense film scene,
the camera zooming in on her pupil as it dilated.
She had a goal, solid in her mind like her mother’s maiden name,
stolen from my watcher the day she emerged,
a product of, for, from her father.

I wanted to be this woman.
She had opinions on everything
from late-stage capitalism to chunky peanut butter.
She knew her philosophers
and would pull theory from her Bottega when fighting with a relative.
She stayed up late at night,
ripping pages from magazines like Vanity Fair and Vogue,
only to piece together collages without tape,
falling apart like sandcastles.
I wanted to be this woman.
She had a solid foundation to her,
of rights and wrongs,
justice and in-,
anecdotes and quotes.
She was never without a friend by her side to comfort her,
a mother a phone call away,
a lover of dreams.
She knew who she was.
She was.
Who was I to gaze into her eyes and confirm her existence,
if she had already checked that box herself?

We held each other frozen for a few moments more,
then I broke contact and turned back to the bar,
ordering another drink.