Her name is Maud …

Tonight's workout accompaniment: Dream Theater Once in a Livetime

It's a funny name, especially when you consider that she began life as a man. There was a passage that I can't remember from a story in which the main character was a blind woman named Maud. All I can remember is that there was something to the way she made him feel that reminded me that sometimes the slightest flutter of eyelids and touch of fingers on shoulder can make a year of longing tolerable.

Sightless eyes closed in longing. I haven't felt that way in a long time.

Her name is Maud. She's got a jaunty tilt of head, a nose that's entirely wrong, hair that's black and lips too black to believe. She's been watching me with her sightless eyes for two months. She knows I'm here, and I know she's there. And sometimes, when the angle of light hits her just so, I know she's finally perfect. More or less.

True, her hair falls unnaturally in front of her shoulder. And her lips are too black, the little divot beneath her nose is too small.

But when I see her on the street, when I see that imperfect nose and those black lips. I know she's perfect.

Her name is Maud. She's a duotone in yellow-and-black acrylic on canvas. I guess that's my thing.