from a recent Insta post, a shared photo of a fading tattoo

then, she wrote a short letter, such, like this and it read “i’ll never forget you”. placed it upon what was once one of our pillows on our bed and left while i was dutifully at work. herself, the dog (surely passed now) and half of our things that kept a collection of dust, seemed to have woke up and walked through the door in an exiting fashion. we tied redwood branches to walls and decorated the inside of our place with the out-doors of things. lost-rocks as prudent art, carefully woven eucalyptus twigs masqueraded as painting, and a multi-millennia old Ohlone grinding stone, rightfully, in our side-yard.

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this... it’s been a storied life, like most others, with drastic ups, caustic downs, familial reminders and concussed memories that stay a winters-lit for years that morph and resonate into those lost-slot decades. given-up seconds that tip-toe a sly-like dance amidst the brackish violence of passing time. “...left on the cutting room floor, she said...”

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a friend of nearly ten years, tonight, asked me if i’d ever been to indiana. simply and coyishly, all i could do was grin and feverishly reflect. how i ended up on the subject of my first love was photographic in nature and needled into my wrist by justin bell // san jose-2002. a man, now, with a different name, as a deed i traded for a cross-california tom waits-style ride in to reno, a crashed wedding and another introduction to some small small world to later discover. dan will read this // amber might. i love ya both.

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the tattoo has been cleft and cut with precision for some dust to titanium surgery, been timber-framed and lodged with splintered eastern-white pine while cutting mortis and tenons with draw-knives in northern vermont, survived a high-pipe burn or two on a motorbike while riding and reaching down to warm the wind-chilled hands, say mountainous colorado (where fuzz is flicking trains), the eastern sierras (a range young and wind-beat) and the everywhere-elsewheres we went. it’s left worn-well and remains a long welcome. one day from day one.