And Then You Are This Person

Parents pass away slowly after their death; come back as your face in a mirror. People’s lives’ are a code written on the blind side of your skin. You watch yourself coming out of a childhood bedroom stained now with a foreboding dream. Once, getting lost in a dark theater knowing, even as a child that would not be the last time. Yesterday inside a newborn moment, you grew up too fast and almost disappeared. Today your mind is a crow silhouette in the sky. A friend dies in your arms. You take her on your Suzuki to the Thai river market, drop her ghost into the Peng river; hope that it will eventually find its way back to Arkansas. You select smells that you can paste into your mind. The aroma of strange friends and friendly strangers. fold sensorial moments into origami birds that are not even close to working models. People you have known are hand shadows on the same wall of time. And then you are this person and all you can do is watch from a distance as if you were always a father to these drifters, these persons, who once shared the same storms with you.