Closets of words yet to be worn

A younger woman walked in front of me.

For a moment, I thought she was wearing nothing so much more than the long johns I wear under my nondescript baggy pants on her own legs descending from beneath her dark brown, thigh-length, down-filled nylon coat.

The term of art, I’m told by those who know, is leggings.

Sensible word.

But even to me, it was clear she knew what she was doing -

the tops of her silvery boots coming just up to a cushion of gray wool socks rolled at the base of her calves,

turquoise and teal knitted into the scarf wrapped around the base of her flax-at-dusk-streaked hair like the skirt under a decorated Christmas tree.

The impression she painted was perfect to my eye, though perhaps my earlier simile doesn’t quite fit.

I never caught more than a glimpse of one cheek as her head turned at the light, and her figure was well-muffled,

but the clack, clack, clack of her heels on the concrete sidewalk crossed over the threshold into my consciousness.

In the steps of a half-block, before she turned into a shop, perhaps in pursuit of the elements of her artistic expression, I tucked colored threads and the feel of soft leather on the eye into an envelope in my brain.

Surely there are more important things in the world than caring how you appear in the world - or crafting poetic tributes to style.

Still, it is my vain hope that the unknown subject of my study will read my words, and smile knowingly at the thought that the color woven into the yarn fashioned to keep her neck warm accomplished something more.

And as it was the horizontal folds at the backs of her knees that first drew my attention to her work, and if I have succeeded in my attempt to capture something of her style in my carefully chosen words, perhaps she will go out and buy another pair of leggings in tribute to my style.