Happy Birthday.

When she smoked like she belonged, she looked like a champion of an era filled with coffee drinks and cigarettes in public places. I watched her with a twinge of sorrow in the background of my eyes, because I knew that a couple of mysteries had done her wrong. I counted myself as one of them. It wasn't until the rest of the social prerequisites had been filled, when her hand had another hand to hold, all coddled up and cuddled down within the confines of an unempty sheet, that I would be able to sleep soundly knowing that the mysterious nonsense had finally done her proud. She pushed her bangs with the corners of her fingers and let the shade of the shady place mingle with the shade of her eyelashes until she was a sun-proof enigma born in the wrong city at the wrong time. I liked to watch the way she watched other people. I hated to watch the way she watched herself. Intuits and indecencies aside, though, until her labels got washed away and she could be everything that destiny had assured all of us she would become, she was one of the greats. She didn't know it yet, but I did. I do. Happy birthday kiddo, I whispered in her head, you'll be better than me until the moon becomes the sun.