Effictio (ef-fik’-ti-o): A verbal depiction of someone’s body, often from head to toe.
She was striking— trying to get a match lit to light her hand-rolled cigarette— but she was striking in many other ways. Her hair was almost black and strewn with auburn highlights. When she shook her hair it was like living tinsel, shimmering everywhere on her head. It was perfect. It was thrilling. It was grounds for being captivated, like the first time I noticed my mother’s diamond ring when I was a small child. Whenever she moved her hand a magical light was produced making a bottomless play of colors, coming out of, and disappearing into her ring.
And eyes—a unique color blue that God must’ve chosen to go with Adele’s hair. And mouth—vivid red bows fronting teeth so straight and white they could be mistaken for hand-carved ivory.
With Adele, it was about more than her hair—it was about her face: a perfect circle of tanned skin with a little nose so lovely that it made me understand that there’s beauty in breathing—the pert air channel letting in and letting out life’s breath, set in the middle of her face, accenting the will to live that breathing actualizes, as our lungs are filled and emptied, and we move on.
There’s so much more, but I’ve got to go pick up Adele for our fifth date. I wish she would laugh at my jokes, but she just waves her hand in front of her face.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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