Oh Donna.

There is this woman I work with who I am little obsessed with. She is... Something I have never known or met before. She has a long, blonde, white blonde, mullet. She wears this brace on her arm that covers her track marks and when she gets to work she takes speed and then cleans the whole deli obsessively.
While she cleans though I get to know a lot about her. There is occasionally some down time when she tells me stories. I like these times because I like learning about her. How her and her husband Tim used to be known as the Bonnie and Clyde of the westside. How her dead mother visits her, her sign that she has visited is that she un-latches the door of a clock that she gave to her daughter before she died. Her dead husband also visits her from time to time, but he throws things and once left her a card in her bible. I love this woman.
I think her dad abused her pretty badly growing up. Which probably explains her choices in life. She told me once that she went through a huge folk music phase and her brother gave her a guitar that she would play until her fingers bled. She wrote all of her own songs. I would love to hear them.
She has two children. A daughter and a son. And sometimes it is hard to see her as a mother. It's hard to imagine something growing inside of this woman and then to imagine her raising them is often harder. But occasionally a child will come with his mother to the deli to get whatever lunch meat is on sale and this woman will coo over the babies and talk to older children in such a motherly way, it's easy to forget having heard sniff whatever pill earlier on in the ladies room.
When oldies songs come on the radio we both sing them quietly to ourselves and I feel connected to her. She bought me a drink on my birthday and I wish we could go out for more drinks so I can get her drunk until she tells me everything.
She reminds me of my mother... In that I love her in a way, but she terrifies me.