There is a lady with skin like clay.

I bump into her often at the bus stop and she always talks to me.

I don’t know what and how far back she remembers.

She said it herself  “Ik zou je naam vergeten zijn, tegen de tijd dat ik bij de gemeente ben”.

She remembers she’s seen me three times.



Truth be told, they are far more than that.

She remembers the times in the sun.

I’ve met her under rain and storm. You gotta move, you know.



She doesn’t take the bus, she just sits and waits for time to pass between the hospital
and the municipality;
from one type of bureaucracy
to the other.


The second or third time we met, she had told me some of her life stories.
Today she was suspicious.
She didn’t even want to tell me her name. Says last time she told someone, he shouted it in the street.



Poor guy, this lady belongs to no one. She is a ghost. Kind-hearted, but a ghost.



Like a twisted hank,
                 she sits at the bus stop,
            telling stories.


At the center, some day, two girls said hi to her, she said hi back, then turned to me and raised her hands. Strangers.



One of her sons, she told me, had gotten into trouble. She had many kids. Five, I think.



One in Utrecht, the other in Eindhoven… Doctors, lawyers, comfortable people. But he, she didn’t understand how, had blown everything up and had ended up in the streets.



She never found traces of him. Perhaps, he went back to Indonesia.



Her hands grasped her coat -I don’t know where she dug them up, these jackets in polyester quilt with pastel floral patterns. 



The leg floated in her pants –beige or light grey.

Thin and confident, a leg that’s been around.



She had something quick about her.


She reminded me of another image that someone, years ago, had shown me.
She reminded me of princess Kikisoblu.
A beauty, carved by time.
A face with wrinkles only in places –the smile, the wisdom. You could see she hadn’t had an easy time, but her will had won.




Her eyes had sparkle, still.

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Illustration: Elisa de la Serna Gallego