On the bus

Here was this girl - tiny, with these soft brown orbs staring straight up as she tilted her head back. Her baby-fine dark brown hair was put up in pig tails with two different colored bands. She smiled so fully, so much without self-consciousness, that it made me smile dumbly and impulsively at her. She won't remember this time in her life. One day, with the same hands, the same eyes, she'll have her heartbroken, or feel such ecstasy, such delight, such sorrow, or so much of something that her body will pulsate with it. She'll grow into this person that will have this normal life. Stranger still, we were all once this little girl. I'm still so detached from my own humanity, I think we all are, that I can't recognize my own growth, can't imagine it, am only aware of being, of only ever being.