I saw her every day, wearing the same dirt-faded clothes but carrying a different bag each time. On some days the bag was made of linen or some other cloth; on others, plastic, and it obviously had been found alongside the rest of the scraps she carried.
She collected what people in the neighborhood threw out or abandoned. I saw her pick up someone's potential once, right off the curb. It looked like an orange rind. Another time she tried to pick up an old woman's true love from where the woman had dumped him. The bag lady had had trouble fitting him into her sack, for a while.
I went to her once with a cheese sandwich in hand, in case she was hungry. She smiled a refined smile, the kind offered by old ladies who like to work in gardens, and told me thank you, but she was doing quite well with what she had.
"Do you have a place to stay?" I asked her tentatively.
"Oh, I've made a very nice home for myself," she said. "Would you like to see it?" I hesitated before even trying to give her an answer, but it didn't matter: she placed her hand on my shoulder and pushed me into the bag anyway.
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