I.
I have just returned from Illinois, Michigan, and the scrape of Ohio. I will return toward the end of the month.
II.
Earlier this evening, I thought of you. It was in the cool, blue light of the apartment you used to live in with the walls that didn’t quite touch the ceiling. Your museum living room. The neighbors that complained about your smoking.
I have a voicemail you sent me on March third of the year you knew me. You had brought a man home from the bar. You didn’t know why. You barely knew what happened. The fear and confusion in your voice is palpable.
Sometimes, I have this odd impulse to send it to you. I don’t know why. I never would, of course, and don’t even know why I still have the voicemail. It was something I held on to for evidence for you, if you ever needed it. Then, as time went on, I had waited too long to delete it. Now, with my romance toward archival material, it is too late to destroy it with a clean conscience. And so, it rests.
III.
I have been reading a lot of research that is fucking me up. It stares me straight in the eyes with its information and blinks only when I do. The curve of its hands hold my jawline and ask me “Didn’t you know this already?”. I did not. It seems like such an odd Keeper to hand me now, at this point in my life, the keys that unlock the rooms I’ve been trying to get into my entire life.
Behind me, I hear the grumbles of a suspicion only trauma can instill. It makes me smile the smile that sparks a person to defensively ask why I am laughing.
I am not laughing.
I am shining from within in recognition.
I am shining from within in particular love.
You with your hair freshly cut from the barber closest to your work.
You with a microfiber lens cloth dutifully kept deep in your pants pocket.
be well; be loved,
k.
(Photograph by Leslie Zhang for MWMW Studios Fall 2019)
