He never really understood her. He always tried his best to, but that rarely resulted in anything.
Because there were some days that her eyes glowed like parroted embers from a warm campfire and her spontaneity could have stretched to the curls of papered imagination, and yet there were others when she looked like a crumpled origami crane tattered by years of being shoved in the backmost corner of the cupboard and her limbs seemed to be made out of peeling glass and her entire body was almost sighing, as if the weight of the air she breathed in was too much already, and she was going to break now, break and fall and never be whole again.
There were far more of her rag doll days than her good ones, and that always made him sad. He never really knew what to look for in those tired eyes of hers, but when she came home like that, old and disappearing, and stumbling into his waiting arms, it didn’t really matter anymore.
Not really, anyway.