She stands before me, simply beautiful, unknowingly perfect. Rather than the sum total of some arbitrary list, it is her whole that captures my attention. Like some ancient and hidden treasure, she exists in great and stark contrast to the world that surrounds her: quiet against its loud, soft against its harsh, real in the face of its false fronts. Her backdrop, for all her wonder, is nothing less than death—brutal, unflinching, all-out war. Guns fire and bombs drop, unleashing a bloody, fiery mess. Her order persists in defiance of such chaos, begs the question: How?

How, amongst all this horror, does such beauty exist? Is it struck, founded, forged in the heat of eternal battle, or does it hide from that ever-hungry beast, alive in spite of its never-ending chase? I cannot say, only cherish. She is tucked away in my memory, a seed for something grand to be poured out of my mind at some as yet unknown and later date. For now, I am merely frozen in this simple moment, soaking in its wrenching briefness, an untouchable, finite eternity.

The moment breaks as she calls once more for my attention. I turn away from the World War II documentary playing on the television, take the receipt she hands me. She bids me good day and I return the courtesy. As I walk through the door into the world outside, I cannot help but wonder if it is all that different from the imaginary one I’ve just left.