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This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Half of a Yellow Sun)

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“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”

— Author/farmer Nelson Henderson

,said the shotgun to the head. flashbackINfastForward

if ever
there were currents
uncurrent

the wind
could not serve as
truth's currency

CURRENTLY
MOON MARKED
AND
SUN SPARKED
UNMARKED BILLS
i AM
CERTAIN
i SPEAK A NEW LANGUAGE

as is ALWAYS
THE FIRST SIGN
of a 
NEW AGE
-------------------
from now on
cities
will be built
on one side
of the street

so that soothsayers
will have wilderness to wander
and lovers
space enough
to contemplate
a kiss

wetlands

The ocean is my powerhorse; we plow away.
The rain, the days, the toiling of the hours,
our slow trot through the city towards a vague page on this years calendar. April 28th (and then some.)
We canter into an old lovers bed, eating unfamiliar hay, with the same old teeth
pressing our tongue against something that resembles something
that used to fuel our jarbled motion
avoiding contact with the eyes that might stir our senses to question
our pause
at this silent memory hanging on your bed post.

on an April horse, i trust the waves to move me home.

Tricia

This is how obscenely organized tric was... she had zip bags labeled with things like socks and leggings and trouser socks..

The first time I went to her place after what happened I went with Greg and Marcie. It was my idea that I had to go before her folks arrived, before they change it, take it apart. Going was the closest thing that I could think of to being close to her, to saying some kind of goodbye.
I sat in the living room of her apartment for a long time before I could go in. The first time I walked up to her room Greg and Marcie were already inside. Greg was sitting at her desk. The room was dark. Marcie sat on the floor wedged in the corner between the bed and Tricia's alter. She was crying. When I walked up and stood in the bedroom doorway, Marcie looked up at me and our eyes held for several seconds. It broke me, I had to run back to the living room and pull myself together again. When the tears come they feel endless. When the tears stop it feels abrupt. The second try I made it inside.
I stood for a long time there on my side of the room, close to the doorway. Then with my head pressed into her pillow sobbing.
We took turns trading positions in the room. Greg on the floor, Marcie at the desk, me at the desk, Marcie standing by the wall beside the door-frame. Each of us crying in turn, the room growing darker with the setting sun.
We stayed this way for hours.
I was the one who broke the spell. When I found the journal I asked that we turn on the light. Everything up until this point had been hedging on intuition.
Tragedy seems to connect me to that inner voice. In tragedy, i'm still enough to listen.

it felt like my final parting with her. Before this day, I'd seen her last in October, before flying to Thailand. I think she gave me chap stick and some sort of salve for bug bites that i didn't take along.

The night before i flew to Thailand, I texted Ryan. I took a Lyft to his house and we had sex. For the first time since we'd started our affair I didn't spend the night. There were too many unfinished things before i flew.

For the first time in a long series of flights I didn't see Tric the next afternoon before heading to the airport. Our last real exchange before it happened was about her living room. How she'd finally, after all these years, set it up just right. How i'd come over with some hdmi cables when im back so we could watch movies on her tv.

Funny how the little things become so meaningful sometimes in ways we'd never know or think to expect.

which is crazy because outside is weather and inside is weather.

One thing I can tell you about animals and weather—some of them like it, and some of them are dead.

on Jen, and the Gr8 fall-out

“You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.”
(amen)