Lasagna tonearm

Days¹ have been counted².

¹ Many of them.

² Not literally.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog. A nice ‘this is water’ message told by dual narrators who caused varying degrees of irritation to me as a reader. But ultimately, the message was a lovely one. Although I disagree with decision to end the book the way it was ended. Well, perhaps not the way it ended, but to me, in hindsight, the beauty of the penultimate scenes felt like an easy emotional trick.

Now, for something lighter, I’ve picked up This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust. Also, as his name has kept coming up in my life, I’m reading a biography of Frederick Law Olmstead by Witold Rybcznski. I also bought some more books during my last trip to Boston (from Rodney’s, Harvard Bookstore, Raven).

Twenty-two years later
I can only mostly forget you.
The things I don’t forget,
I may soon.

But now I can remember your little red Dodge,
and how things sped up
when your dad died and I was
the closest shoulder.
And recordstore smokes, listening to our cool.
Mixtapes. Notes on windshields.
Riding to the club in the bed of Doozer’s El Camino,
sodium streetlights dotting overhead.
You said they looked like shooting stars, but
I was just counting them.
I remember (sort of) me before I broke.
And fights about being high.
And the hazy outlines of a few fucks.
But mostly I remember waiting.
And not trusting.
And being trusted when I shouldn’t have.

And now, here, we talk again.
And we can’t even agree on our memories
about how things ended.
You say I left you.
I say we drifted apart.

You tell me all the things that you haven’t forgotten.
“Yeah, that was great,” I type.
And I nod an invisible IM nod,
knowing I don’t remember ever being all that good.