given the choice between a dryer and a clothesline, I’ve never really needed the machine.

“Let me know when you get home.”

It’s been about an hour since my friend pulled out of the driveway, headed home after dropping me off from our day of shenanigans.

I still haven’t received a text to confirm that she’s alright, and I’m getting worried. Her destination was ten minutes away.

I send another text as a reminder, then lay in the dark for a while, staring at the ceiling.

I suspect she’s okay. Probably just forgot, got distracted. Maybe her phone is dead.

Still, I’m unsettled. Fifty-five miles an hour down a two lane highway, in the dark, in a car that sometimes creaks at all the wrong moments. And the deer are out in droves.

Imagined scenarios play themselves out, unbidden. None or them are pleasant.

Some time later, the small rectangle of blue light that is my phone’s screen illuminates the dark.

“Dead in a ditch,” she’s announced.

I do not throw my phone across the room.

I call her some rude names, which she deserves, and tell her that I love her before falling asleep.

Probably isn’t necessary. She knows.

Today a friend takes me out for vanilla ice cream in a waffle cone, a walk by the creek in the middle of town, a trip to a second hand store and the acquisition of a green corderoy button down shirt, a walk through the mall, grilled chicken and potato salad at her mom’s house, and Reisling and s’mores around a campfire in the backyard. Kept an eye out for bats. There were several.

Earlier this week there was an adventure out to Watkin’s Glen, for the waterfalls. Later on there was pizza and beer and good company. I got to choose the music in the car on the way home. Almost fell asleep.

I’ve been riding shotgun.

I want to remember this time.

Ian – I’ll miss rolling your cigarettes in the apartment that smelled like cinnamon scented candles over the art gallery on main street, eating chocolate pancakes at 3am, listening to vinyl Pink Floyd and Glass Animals records, losing at chess and arguing against your half baked devil’s advocate stances on philosophical concepts we would have understood better if we’d actually done the reading more often than we did. You are. the worst. and also my time here would not have been the same without you.

Jacob – I’ll miss the way you always spoke up in class with something to say, your eye for the artistic, your political awakeness, your charming conversationalist energy that could consistently be relied upon to light up a room, your desire for a better experience of philosophy, your strategies for how to make that real. One day I’ll be good enough at chess to stand a chance against you.

Emma – there are no words. I miss singing harmony with you. I wish you nothing but the best.

Anthony – I will never look at a scateboard without thinking of you and your yellow backpack. Thanks for drinking coffee and talking about writing with me.

Sky – you actual goddess from the shores of Greece. I love your shoes. Keep on making food that looks amazing. Best of luck to you in law school on the other side of the continental united states, you bad b. You deserve this. Slay, etc..

Moira – the energy you devoted to curating the philosophy club experience these last couple of years opened the door for some truly excellent conversations. Good times. Take your skills with artistic design and leadership and go forth and create something beautiful, please. I believe that you will.

Leila – I would have married you to the love of your life but you wanted our conspiracy theories professor to do that instead. this place will never be the same without your chaotic presence playing Stardew Valley in the department. I will never not think of your kisses when I hear that one specific Eric Clapton song. Until the day that I die. Some of these days I’ll have to hitchhike to long Island for a grilled cheese sandwich. I love you.

Remember that.

pronouns – they/them, more and more often. she/her if you say the words with all the reverence feminine energy deserves. ocational he/him from the cashier at 7-11 is totally understandable on butch days

gender – the one with the flannels (if I get a say)

attachment style – pdf

sexual/romantic orientation – usually accomplished with a map of questionable accuracy and a compass that doesn’t always point north

type – emotionally unavailable old friends, mostly

cats or dogs? – do not make me choose

quirks – anything you say in my presence can and will be written down in a fancy little notebook. might later become part of a story. words on the page are easy. the spoken word in the presence of others is usually stuck-in-the-back-of-the-throat complicated, unless it’s a topic of medium philosophical consequence and I’m in a room full of people, in which case I sometimes have Things to Say

style – just now learning how to shop for clothes and get dressed in the morning

neurotype – homeschooled! iykyk

physical affection ok? – trust is earned over time

walks? – heck yeah

dream job – perpetual monarch chrysalis

oh, so you thought trying to burn all of the bridges at once was a Good Idea?

nice going, you absolute nonsense human.

moron.

twat.

thanks so much for the light pollution from the smoke from your fires. Haven’t been able to see the stars in months.

trainwreck.

do you have any idea how frustrating it is. to call and speak with the engineers. to slowly begin the work of rebuilding the connections you decided to throw away on purpose. all at once.

dumbass.

(good thing the engineers in question still remember you helped them with their calc homework in college, or all of this would be so much worse)

anyway. they’re doing their best to rebuild in the aftermath

still might never be the same.

some of those connections were absolutely beautiful connections and now they’re –

well, here, if you haven’t checked in on them a while

you might need a drink of water and somewhere to sit down.

we are in the process of repairing and rebuilding and also it is going to take time. everything takes time.

meanwhile,

let me lay a plank of wood across a creek to make it easier for the message to get across

to both of those lonely ass braincells rattling around inside your skull.

the trees we felled for the purpose of rebuilding might still be standing if you hadn’t wasted some of these perfectly good bridges

you’re lucky that some of these people on the other side of distance between you and them are still willing to let you reach out

(more than willing, actually – absolutely dismayed when they saw smoke from your direction on their own horizons)

please remember that you don’t need to light the entire hecking forest on fire to keep yourself from freezing to death in the winter.

in fairness,

maybe it’s like – that one specific species of pine tree, I think, that can only make new trees in the aftermath of forest fires, because the pinecones containing the seeds only open when the surrounding temperature is hotter than blazes

maybe sometimes you need to do whatever it takes to stop your own blistered feet from carrying you back to the places to which you find yourself returning, over and over again, even when – upon not much reflection at all, really – you don’t actually like them very much.

maybe something new and important rises from the ashes, like a phoenix.

I don’t know.

Just –

Please don’t play with matches, anymore. not here.

_

[okay look when I said gaslight gatekeep girlboss those were not instructions]

–

It’s been almost exactly five years since one conversation and I still remember her name.

Lost one of ours, this year.

He did, too.

& I still remember another, around the beginning of the pandemic.

–

We’re adopting.

This one got abandoned in a parking lot in Texas. Good natured stranger picked him up and carried him home. He’s about one or two years old.

This one has the same white stripe down the middle of his nose. Same shape of the face. The resemblance is uncanny.

They could have been littermates.

So I think what this means is that the dog days aren’t over.

Not for me.

All I’m saying is that nobody will suspect that you’re regularly shoplifting from the arts and crafts supply store across the street from the grocers if you tell all your friends not to tell anyone that you moved to Washington and you work as an undercover agent for the FBI.

Maybe you moved to Texas and you work for NASA.

Maybe you never left, and you can’t see.

It really helps if you invest in a pair of sunglasses, some flannels, temporary tattoos, and a large and very curly wig that is roughly the same color as your eyebrows.

Why run away to the woods with a bag of rice when you could just grow a beard and change the spelling of your name?

To be fair, the woods are lovely.

Shout out to whoever is out here vandalizing the backs of the buildings next to the funeral home on main street in town with the graffitied letters of my grandfather’s name, in cursive loops of white spray paint.

What a strange true actual coincidence.

May the forth be with you.

If I ever happen to find myself in need a pseudonym, I might could name myself after him.

cried writing this.

To all of the children who’ll never exist

I think if I could leave you with anything, it would be this.

A true knight doesn’t need chainmail, a gambison, plate armor.

You will not require a sword.

Put away the leather.

Quit checking your hair, your skin, your eyes in the mirror. You look fine.

Can’t take them with you, anyway, not where you’re going.

the truth is

I think any knight worth his salt could march comfortably into the woods in a favorite old hoodie and faded blue jeans, the best good shoes with the worn out laces, finger guns, and all of the fortitude necessary to muster a smile.

If this reaches you, somewhere in the multiverse – across space and time and every tangled up alternative sequence of events, because Quantum –

Go forth.

Please have all the best adventures. I’ll still be there, when you come back. Stop home once and a while and tell me everything.

You will never be lost, not really, so long as you can still remember how to find your way back.

Yours, always.

“losing him was blue like id never known/missing him was dark grey all alone/forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you’d never met/but loving him was red….”

– TS

sunglasses!!!

the infamous grey Sebby jacket

ramen noodles with mushrooms

a souvenir from the grippy sock vacation which Definitely Happened.

The red wristband means allergies.

If it’s a gluten allergy, that would make me celiac.

As opposed to unceli – ack.

Sorry.

“Would rather die than give up the foods.”

Cowboy hat.

“Howdy, partner.“

SAND POINT SUB STATION call if you need a deputy. Alternatively you could just call a cab.

Lilac.

(Lack of lye?

For soap making!

Probably.)