I notice her as I am crossing the park. It is a park that is filled with homeless people. A safe place for them to be, a place designed for them to be, a place that is for the people and is named in recognition of that truth. I scan the grass, watching the dogs and the people laying on the ground.

Sometimes, I hear singing and I know that the Christians have come with food and religion. I see the mixture of Doritos, coke, chocolate and Jesus and think about alchemy.

I am walking across and a man calls out to me, “Good morning!” I wave back to him and understood the need to be seen. I walk by a matted haired white woman, lost in folds of clothes covered in dirt. I breeze past her, taking in the landscape of homeless whose stories are too numerous to know in this moment. I wonder about all the choices, the histories, the herstories and the moments that lead to her sitting cross-legged on the ground.  She calls out to me, “You look beautiful!” I am caught off guard and fall into a laugh and thank her.

I am walking home at night after a very long day, feeling grateful in my heart. From the dark, under a tree, I hear someone yell to me, “Hellooooo beautiful!” Even in the moonlight, I can see her matted hair. I yell back, “Hello there sweetheart!” She yells to me, “I love you!”  The words are so authentic, they cut past space and time and land right in my heart. Then I hear two men echo her, “We love you!” I stumble in words and body and yell to her, “Thank you and I love you!” I hope she knows I mean it.

She is sandwiched between two men and one of them yells to me, “We mean it!” She turns to one of the two men sitting next to her and says, “I just think she is so beautiful.” Another man says, “Yeah, she is a Goddess.”  She laughs in agreement.

As I reach my home, my only prayer is to see her again, so that I can tell her that it takes one Goddess to know another.