I still remember the first glimpse I had of her. She was only seventeen at the time, a wisp of white against the smudged gray of a filthy store window. She had stopped with another girl to remark upon some dresses loosely draped over wooden mannequins inside. Two delicate-looking shoes dangled from her left hand, caked with mud, and I observed to my surprise that her feet were bare against the cobblestones like a pair of soft kittens knocked from a passing basket, still recovering from their confusion. That very night, although I had not learned her name, I composed the first of my letters. More of a poem, really, this one; an assortment of adulations, a page of praise. But my eyes had learned the look of her, etched into my corneas like a burning moth, and I would not soon forget it.

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