je ne sais quoi

A girl cries in the park near a tattered bench, fingers desperately shifting through wiry grass, knees smeared with dirt.
A child? Definitely not.

Slender legs in tights betray a struggling maturity, anonymous in the dark. Her eyes  are
Puffed, red and swollen, like her cold fingers
that brushed against last night’s rain a touch too often. Her bony arm grips
my blue suit, ------. She tells me imploringly, wistfully, that she’s lost her doll, twists her body to parallel mine, twists her fingers through my sleeve.

She is still a child, I decided. Not at the age of reason. She platters on, chittering about the toy; without warning, her reminiscences seep into my own nostalgia,

even though I have never seen a doll before, and I start to imagine orange poppies that imploringly beg to be pulled, my grubby hands, not unlike the pair trembling in front of me. Her speech is amateurish, but
that wistfulness, recklessly knotted into words pairs perfectly with her donned, sweet expression.

When her breath finally runs out and escapes her mouth in curled clouds, I allow myself to speak, I say, her doll happens to be Alice, she jumped down a rabbit hole to meet the Cheshire cat and the mad Hatter,
who has enough grandiose to entertain everyone in the entire world until the sun bursts to flame. She’s playing games with the Queen of Hearts, fraternizing with the court jesters, an adventure.

 The girl folds her arms, cupid bow upturned and somberness gone. Her name isn’t Alice, she pouts, it’s Missy. She brings small digits up to her mouth and softly pets the grass as you would a kitten, sending kisses to Missy down in the rabbit hole. Her golden giggles release yet another puff of air into the chilly wind, and without warning, my rusty laugh does too.  

I watch as she stands, fretting about going home, stray green blades clinging to her legs. She shivers as she bids farewell, bounding away on light legs. Her small figure rushes into gloomy outlooks, disappearing in a mass of longer, winding bodies.  I can’t place the strange feeling I have, so I sit on the ground until my eyes can no longer follow her petite shoulders.