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She was a cartoon. A flesh and blood, living cartoon. Her hair changed shape color and length as easily and frequently as an eraser of a colored pencil or stroke of a brush.

The cells of her skin radiated with whatever was in her environment, whether it be an acrylic, crayon, radon, CO2, or rain. Her tears were like the rain and missed salt and emotions. Her tears only contained what she picked up through her skin on the way to Starbucks or the grocery store. She lacked emotions, soul, or rhythm, but she had a whistling sound about her. She staggered along in life; eyes leaking acid one day and mocha soy lattes the next.

Her hair was red the day she met Brian. It's been one shade of red or another for a while. She just can't find the shade to match the love she searches for to fill her. The love she exerts is the color of gray.

Charlie B had adored her from a far. He liked the way she seemed mysterious and he wondered about the whistle that hung around her like an aura. He thought, "I can't see what she thinks. I can't see anything in her. She must hide everything. There must be unknown, unfound, unseen, undiscovered depth to her that I have yet to purchase, dig for, penetrate through. "So he persisted on through and found that he found only himself. And that frightened him so he backed away, retreating.

Next she had Carl. Carl was the scientist. He also wanted to search the depth in her. He too, only found himself in her. She was the shallow looking glass, with no real depth of its own, but only borrowed light and values-for she had no variations of depth or tone herself. Carl stayed until her image started to reflect the bruises, and he decided he didn't like her look of depth.

Pedro was an obstetrician. He kept trying to fill her. He cooked enchiladas, chili, Green chilly stew, pasta, fish and chips, and roast. She gained 20 pounds and felt emptier inside. Her stomach extended further and further out until it was twice its healthy size. He would fill it, but then it would empty out and it was just a bag, 2 as big and twice as empty as before.

Joe was next. That's what he thought of himself. He was always next in life, always in the verge of something, not quite there yet, but always almost, he couldn't quite make it to her and so they were only just about, merely.

She sat, sitting. She thought about dating the big bug climbing up the window: "Sure he has six legs and antennas," but she could trap it and keep it with her. So she pounced at it and put it in a Ball jar and slept with it, clasped in her sweaty hands. The bug expired during the night and she awakened to its stiff body. She figured that it starved to death during the night and that she should have given him lots of greens. In a state of mourning, she flipped on her back, sticking her arms and legs up in the air and while looking up at the ceiling she spotted another bug, a spider creating a sparkling web in the corner. She was fascinated with the spider's matrix of lines and holes and felt a kin to it. She captured that bug and promptly dressed to run to the market. She needed lots of clothing on because the day was cold, and the emptiness in her body left without much warmth.

She ran into the produce section and was reaching for the romaine when her eye was captured by a man handing out pamphlets. It was Brian. He held on to her eyes as he held out an orange paper with his left hand over the tomatoes, and she, wanting her eyes back, asked him for dinner.

He arrived at her place with a bouquet of cilantro. He knocked at the door and entered. The lights were low because Charles B. had liked candles and Marley played in the background because Pedro had liked cooking to him. Brian noticed that Marley was accompanied by a whistling sound that faded in and out. Carl's potatoes, Joe's coffee, Peter's apples, Mark's pasta, and Don's pumpkin pie covered the dinner table. Also her mother's sauce, her sister's garlic bread, and her father's favorite cheese.

He sat down on one of her rickety chairs at the table and noticed that he and the table leaned towards the center of the room, and he still could hear the whistling noise. The clock ticked by, but she was still in the kitchen. He noticed the whistling sound was much louder as she came out, staggering out of rhythm to the music playing. Brian watched her disjointed wailing and thought, "what a lovely doll." They sat across the table and stared at each other. He noticed the whistling noise, but as both of them became fully conscious of it their gaze broke and the whistling died out. They both continued to eat until they were sick, but they couldn't stop as they ate more pasta sauce, more roast, more salad, more of everything.

He was in construction. He thought that he could fill up the hole he felt in her. He was tired of the whistling sound created by the wind blowing through her. He bought mortar, bricks, cement, nails, and shovels and nails to build her up, but the foundation he was trying to build didn't work; it cracked and broke under the structural stress it suffered from. So now she whistled from where the wind traveled through the many different fragments and cracks and holes in it. They ate more and more dinners together. Through his intensifying notice of her whistling, he began to notice that he made a shrill noise too. Their music was dissident and off beat. But they kept eating together, kept eating dinners made through many influences and the more gruel and Pad Thai they ate, the more the whistles harmonized. They came to a point in their relationship where he became a cartoon character too, with his hair am indescribable brown and hers an eternal, like Orphan Annie orange.