Orange grey pears – bartlett – delicious – the fruit basket adorns her hip, sways with the gentle motion of her thighs. Soon she forgets it’s there – the weight – but it gives the steady clockwork motion of her walking a painted pace that I never cease remembering when I see her thick blonde body forming on the market square – going with the throng – her body a throng unto itself. And she is just a girl. No. She has the jungle’s impulse – in her eyes – her step – in the arid square where humidity chokes the sweat of laborers and detergents reek from under the basin. She breathes out of pace – a different, liquid air – a tiger’s breath. She says her name is Rose, because her mother bled.