She smiles at you like a puppet, her mouth sewn shut in stitches of red. Nice, she calls herself, perfect. No baggage. Luckily she can’t fathom self-loathing. Luckily she knows how to meet your eyes and bounce on her toes while she crafts herself into fiction. She wishes she were more of a person, more than the trail of ink on paper. She wishes someone would shake her, would stare into her eyes and command her to speak and exist, would jar her words loose for her.