Street Corner She

     She stood before them on the street corner.  Her thin frame draped over with a grey t-shirt and belted on jeans as much holes as fabric. She appeared clean though.  She wielded a guitar before her, a shield.  Her hands caressed the strings teasing music out, a ward against the evil in the passing hearts.  Her guitar case sat open before her. At once a receptacle for charity and a repellent of the 'decent' folk.  Her auburn hair was done in a braid that was pulled forward over her left shoulder.  It reached her belt.

     She stood, an unpredictable feature of that corner.  Each day she arrived at a different time, her stay just as unpredictable.  Even those 'decent' folk that passed the corner missed her sometimes. Truly.  She stood in the rain beneath the awning of the bagel shop, or the pizza place the other way from the corner.  Otherwise she was right there where Fifth and Washington met, always  the northeast corner.
She stood there seeing everything and nothing.

     One day someone tried to swipe some of the money under the guise of placing a bill into her case.  She slammed it shut on the fellows hand with her foot.  When he pulled his empty had out and hurried off, she packed up and left.  She was back the next day.  Another time she didn't even register the couture lady who dropped a hundred one dollar bills into the case. One day a reporter, a new guy, tried to make eye contact, to get an interview.  He stood transfixed for a moment looking into her green grey eyes.  He broke the gaze with a shudder and hurried away pulling his trench tighter around him.  Later, in bed, he told his girlfriend what he saw there.  He explained that at first her eyes were like any one else's, reflective.  After a moment though, the surface seemed to break and he sunk into them.  The city around them melted and he was in  the music.  He was insistent on that point.  It carried him somewhere, somewhere alien.  He considered himself a wordsmith, but he couldn't describe what he saw, and it was that that had scared him.  His girlfriend consoled him.  His publisher wouldn't run the story. She was there the next day when he passed.

     She shared and bared her songs to the world from that corner. Reporters came now and again broadcasting a song or two along with a short story.  Some stories were positive, others weren't.  She seemed unfazed by them all.  The cops tried to remove her, she went silently with her stuff.  She was always back though.  After a time they left her alone.