She straightens her back, lifts her head, firm and gentle at once, and with heightened awareness lets her steps flow from her lush body. This is her daily victorious parade.

A walk that, to a casual passerby, could be presented as nothing more than an innocent stroll through small town streets, running errands, trivial, necessary and inconsequential.

No one could accuse her of flaunting, of showing off, of even offering herself. Because in truth, she is not offering. She merely places her mature, essential, feminine body at the world’s disposal. She allows herself to be touched by men’s gazes, mature, adolescent, aged, some hidden within the traffic flow, others openly inquisitive, innocently curious or directly lustful. Most of these glances please her. She registers them without lifting her eyes. She feels them, recognizes them in the tilt of her neck, the turn of her body, the whisper of the wind across her skin. Of course, she also meets women’s gazes, pausing on her unintentionally, as if something pulled them in and held them.

And so she walks, along her everyday asphalt, letting her feminine sexual maturity speak. She is conscious of her steps. She hears them when the anklet on her right ankle jingles, that playful summer habit, her only explicit sign of eccentric self-indulgence. She feels them when the fabric stretches over her full thighs. She knows her shirt is open just enough to spark a thought. Her own too. She walks, not too slow and not too fast, playing with gazes, with thoughts, with sensations. In truth, she caresses herself this way, softly, in a sultry summer day, whether in its morning promise or its late afternoon decadence. Her hips rhythmically sway her large backside, which she had tried for years to slim and shape, until she finally realized it was her greatest asset.

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She does not walk like this every day, certainly not, only sometimes, a day, two, sometimes three in a row, when she is hungry for attention, hints or satisfaction. Of course, she knows exactly what she is doing. Women of her age and experience always know. This is her small private perversion. A naïve substitute for the unfulfilled needs of a sexually unsatisfied woman. Entirely innocent, since it never ends anywhere but in her mind. And at the same time strong enough to soothe her hunger. Who knows, perhaps one day she will choose another ending. Perhaps she will finally call her almost lover and seduce him. Perhaps, at some crosswalk, she will lift her eyes and catch the gaze of a mad Italian who knows how to treat a woman. Perhaps her good, loyal, honest husband will finally awaken and realize that the body lying next to him every night hides magical formulas, stronger and wiser than those in learned books.

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Who knows what might happen, perhaps tomorrow already.

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But today, right now, she walks. Her whole body flirts with everyone she meets and yet remains entirely her own. No wrong word soils it, no careless gesture disappoints it, no weary recognition that everything has already been seen dulls it. With each step she enters new passionate, mad, decadent scenes, with faceless lovers, she ignites them, consumes them and leaves them. So simple, fluid, wordless. Nothing is seen, no one is hurt. Each step grows more sensual, until, after a while, a trace of a smile dances onto her face, bringing her genuine joy.

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One more step, and is it not beautiful, that we can feel beautiful.
Almost like a mission, a sacred calling, this walking of hers.
The archetype of Malèna, the sexually mature and lonely woman, coupling only in imagination.

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Step on, my darling. I hope you are walking toward yourself.