KS,

I feel you in numbers, now. I see you in exit signs; mile markers marking 427 miles; digital digits lighting up 10:10 of whatever section of day in a sickly pale green or piercing red. I hear you in sad stricken songs suddenly on the radio, singing words you used to sing to at 21 years old--and at any year before your last.

It's true that those exist still, in some way, intangible though they be.  I wish I could still see them.  I wish the past year didn't so consummately consume those shadows of the past.

It's 11/11/11 today.  I will post this at 10:10pm.  Somehow this small act of remembrance seems significant in ways that much else fails to.  In casual, cryptic fashion, I fashion my months around the trilogy of days that signal missing you.  Nine...ten...eleven.  Today is 11/11/11.  You died on 10/10/10.  I want these simple truths to ring out loudly with simultaneous recognition; to somehow soften the aching harshness therein.

What else is there?  Another year.  The first, really.  A book called Blue Nights that I expect to be a comfort--or at the very least familiar.  The nearing to change, transformation, anythingotherthanthis.  Decaf in the morning, pretending to wake me up.  Another project to dive into, fixing other people's problems to not focus on my own.  Letting my eyes adjust to the blur; no longer fighting for clarity.  Rolling through the days with the gratitude of steam.

And meaning well in the mean time.  Or else selling the sweetness of discreet distraction.

-L (11/11/11)