There's an old woman on the other side of a languid two-lane street, residential. She's wearing a billowed, flowering dress with a peter pan collar she probably made herself; a yellowing perm, narrow glasses pinch her nose, white socks with weary elastic, the one on her left ankle completely collapsed, long-loved moccasins goad each other forward in stammered steps. She hunches over a four-wheeled walker, ever onward and there-ward. Her skin is dehydrated, crisply withered; her hands strain, veins, a clear blue, rise under her negligible weight.

A small girl, smaller than six or seven, with greasy bangs and a berry-kissed mouth is folded over her knees and scowling under coarse sunlight. She is situated on the flat of the walker seat. There's a long stemmed rose, fleshy pink, strangled in her fist, its bloom nods in time with every push forth from the old-woman.

They move, pace slow, the girl's jaw is set like a captain's, the old woman breathes through an open mouth. They keep on the pavement and for a moment they are centered against a modern Tudor home that's partly blanketed in kempt ivy.

I drive along the corner, I don't see them again.