pretty dresses

Four dresses hanging on a silver rod in her small, lofted bedroom, next to a dozen cotton shirts, all the same--with cap sleeves that cover the shoulder just slightly.

Colorful glass bottles adorn the window sill and dusty ballerina prints deck the faded brick walls. Her artwork, photos taken in Paris--a graveyard, the Eiffel Tower are just a few--lay against the floor and on the shelves, neighbors to books on Van Gogh and Vermeer, American Ruins, and one on Paris--the city where she found her beauty.

Cigarettes, a mug, mail, a laptop, files made her just like me, but everything else is simply, distinctively Hannah. Well, things are also there that don't belong, a football, a t-square--we joked about those.

This place is a chapter, at least one, in her memoirs. I'm sure of it. These are the remains, or rather the keepsakes. Only the things she has loved, only the things she needs. All the things I adore about her.