How do you tend to a wound that will never close?
*****
MICHELLE
Michelle went with me to the Make a Change event in 2018. We had grabbed dinner first and then headed to the gym for the show. I had listened to Tinikling practice outside the classroom every Friday since my second year, but I’d never seen them perform. I wanted to see them perform.
We arrived just ahead of the first performance. Michelle pointed to an open bench area close to the gym’s doors, and we climbed around guests on the bleachers to secure our seats.
“Hey Steele,” called out a familiar voice from the buzzing crowd.
I swung my head and found its source. I returned the familiar smile I landed on.
“Hi Katelyn,” I said automatically while still climbing. “Enjoy the show.”
“You too,” she called back.
Michelle and I watched the show. We enjoyed the show. When we descended the bleachers at the end to go congratulate Michael and the other performers, Katelyn was already gone.
On Sunday morning, I used MoviePass to watch my 38th of an eventual 100 movies for $89.95. The movie I saw was Traffik starring Paula Patton, a film with a big issue at its center but little power behind its punch. I remember it was set in Sacramento, and the opening shots had that same artificiality that The Ugly Truth does where you can tell you’re watching stock footage aerial shots of our city, not something fresh and original. This was no Ladybird paying homage to a hometown.
I pulled into my garage and, after turning off my car, I checked my phone. I liked the secure enclosed space of the garage and had a habit then of lingering in it after getting home. I was still a sitter in 2018.
My email contained a message from our principal with a familiar trigger warning subject line. Had I not been at a movie with my phone off, I might’ve picked up for any one of the phone calls she’d made to me. I’d find her voicemail urging me to call not long after. But I had been at a movie theater with my phone off, so I didn’t pick up for any one of those phone calls to me. Instead, sitting in my car, I read her email and learned that Katelyn had died.
I sat in the garage “Hey Steele” for a long enough time that the automatic light above me shut “Hey Steele” off. I sat staring at my phone, trying to figure out how “Hey Steele” the words on my screen were possible. How it could be “Hey Steele” that Katelyn was dead? There was no logic in “Hey Steele” it. It didn’t make sense. I had just seen Katelyn and “Hey Steele” now I was reading this email?
I went inside and climbed onto “Hey Steele” the treadmill. I didn’t turn on the TV; I just walked, increasing my speed every “Hey Steele” few minutes and utterly pounding my feet until the roaring in my ears could “Hey Steele” go away. You know those WOHHHMMMM sounds that make up the “Hey Steele” scores for intense movies? Imagine drowning in that sound. Imagine being “Hey Steele” swallowed up by it.
Soon I was panting and then crying and “Hey Steele” then sobbing with such force that I lost my balance and careened “Hey Steele” off the side. I never use the protective magnetic clip, so “Hey Steele” the treadmill kept whirring with this scratchy repetitive motion. I kicked the machine off with my “Hey Steele” foot.
I marched to my kitchen and just stood there. Any thought I “Hey Steele” might have had was blotted out by the WOHHHMMMM and I felt like “Hey Steele” I was spinning despite being perfectly still outside of my gasps for air. “Hey Steele” I thought about “Hey Steele” faceplanting into the “Hey Steele” couch but I “Hey Steele” worried I “Hey Steele” might “Hey Steele” suffocate. “Hey Steele”
WOHHHMMMM
For the “Hey Steele” third time in my life, “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” I withdrew “Hey Steele” my phone “Hey Steele” and “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” asked for “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” help.
WOHHHMMMM WOHHHMMMM
“Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” Hi Michelle. One of my students died and I need to talk to someone. Do you have time? “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele”
WOHHHMMMM WOHHHMMMM WOHHHMMMM WOHHHMMMM
“Hey Steele” Michelle “Hey Steele” entered “Hey Steele” the “Hey Steele” house “Hey Steele” automatically. “Hey Steele” She “Hey Steele” knew “Hey Steele” I “Hey Steele” would “Hey Steele” have “Hey Steele” unlocked “Hey Steele” it “Hey Steele” for “Hey Steele” her; “Hey Steele” no “Hey Steele” games “Hey Steele” this “Hey Steele” time. “Hey Steele” She “Hey Steele” came “Hey Steele” in, “Hey Steele” gave “Hey Steele” me “Hey Steele” a “Hey Steele” hug “Hey Steele” right “Hey Steele” there “Hey Steele” in “Hey Steele” the “Hey Steele” living “Hey Steele” room “Hey Steele” because “Hey Steele” I’d “Hey Steele” walked “Hey Steele” forward “Hey Steele” to “Hey Steele” meet “Hey Steele” her “Hey Steele” because “Hey Steele” I “Hey Steele” didn’t “Hey Steele” know “Hey Steele” if “Hey Steele” I “Hey Steele” could “Hey Steele” make “Hey Steele” it “Hey Steele” even “Hey Steele” one “Hey Steele” second “Hey Steele” longer “Hey Steele” on “Hey Steele” my “Hey Steele” own, “Hey Steele” and “Hey Steele” then “Hey Steele” she “Hey Steele” sat “Hey Steele” down “Hey Steele” on “Hey Steele” the “Hey Steele” side “Hey Steele” of “Hey Steele” the “Hey Steele” couch “Hey Steele” to “Hey Steele” listen. “Hey Steele”
“We walked right past her on Friday. She was right there, Michelle. Right there.”
“Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele”
“I can still hear her voice. I can still hear her voice.”
Kinetic and “Hey Steele” energetic like no one. “Hey Steele,” I know, Michelle leaned against “Hey Steele” the puffy armrest with an aura of calm. No “Hey Steele” questioning in her eyes, no “Hey Steele” judgment, only laser focus on “Hey Steele” me. A few times she “Hey Steele” ran her fingers along the “Hey Steele” the textured fabric, maybe discharging the “Hey Steele” stress of the situation I’d called her “Hey Steele” into, but her eyes and ears remained with “Hey Steele” me as I tried to wrap my “Hey Steele” mind around losing someone who had been, since “Hey Steele” her first time walking into HL-5, so gloriously, impossibly, wholly “Hey Steele” alive.
“I was so excited about having her in Calculus.”
Michelle stayed with me until I could breathe. “Hey Steele” She answered impossible questions and listened through nonsensical disjointed stories “Hey Steele” about this one person she did not and would not ever know. She never left the “Hey Steele” couch, and her warmth never wavered. It was like there was nowhere “Hey Steele” she would have ever or could have ever possibly been in that moment except sitting on my couch while I sputtered. When she shared, “Hey Steele” it landed; when she didn’t, her nods did instead. She left me with “Hey Steele” a hug 25% longer than I asked for, but that I needed 125% of right “Hey Steele” then.
Eventually, the principal called. That was a good call too. I appreciated that she “Hey Steele” had tried so many times to reach me. That she had correctly figured this might have affected me.
“Hey Steele” When I hung up, I looked at my phone and noticed time had passed. I knew more “Hey Steele” would pass quickly and I would be back at school looking at the desk she had sat in “Hey Steele” only weeks before, earning her final exam A. I should have been thinking about what I would I say to “Hey Steele” them, her peers and friends, about her and handling her disappearance.
But I didn’t think about that. I thought instead “Hey Steele” about how soon after my text Michelle had opened the door.
How fast had she driven to reach me?
How quickly “Hey Steele” had she leapt up to sit on the side of the couch and be my friend for a miserable sobbing hour on “Hey Steele” a Sunday?
I did the math. I sobbed. It was just me in the house, but I felt anything but alone.
“Hey Steele”
“Hey Steele”
“Hey Steele”
*****
MAIA
Wearing long socks in sweltering heat is a questionable choice, but there’s a logic to it, you swear.
You hate the feel of sunscreen on your skin. It makes you feel slick and oily. Things stick to that sunscreen—gnats and lint and flecks of dried grass. Socks are low maintenance by contrast: you pull them on once and they block the sun for hours without that grimy feel that makes you crave a shower.
There’s a cost, of course. When the temperature bloats to more than 100° out there, those socks become smothering blankets that trap heat with the vicious force of a mousetrap. You know it’s a gradual progression and not that sudden intense burst, but you never notice that your calves are being steam cooked until they are already so hot you worry about singeing your fingers pulling them off.
The socks have trapped the heat inside. You need to remove them.
But you can’t just slide them down. There are people around. Your calves will be sweaty and gross; there might be an athletic sock stench to exposing them. Plus, when exposed, they could burn immediately and render all the intentional efforts to protect your skin from the sun wholly moot.
You’re wearing long socks at the Steeplechase. It’s Jupi’s final event; Kadon’s and DeVon’s and Alvin’s and Jasmine’s too. Jupi’s team is en route to a victory that will be his fourth straight. Inner circle hall of fame careers are coming to a close on this day. You’re nervous, but it’s nervous in that way where you know that you shouldn’t be because you know that the team is too good to not secure the ending that you think they deserve. The kind of nervous that says more about you than about the stakes.
Maia stayed back in Elk Grove an extra day to volunteer at the Steeplechase. She’s skipping class. She’ll be fine academically from that absence, but it’s still a sacrifice. A hugely helpful one, though, because this is your first year organizing, writing, and running the event. Securing volunteers was a challenge.
Even under the cover of trees, you are burning up. You all are. It is a late May day, but this is summer weather through and through. You feel that truth even more because summer break has already begun. This is quite literally your final scholastic event of the 2018 school year. Sure, you’ve still got the dinner, and you’ll leave for the AP Reading not long beyond that, but this will close the chapter on a year that has ground you into an emotional nub since “Hey Steele” Katelyn died.
When the event finally ends and all commemorative photos have been taken, cleanup falls to you. You have help, of course, but many leave, eager to begin their vacations or get back to the work that they set aside to proctor or participate. You are so warm that you are panting, but the drinks cooler has already been removed and stashed by whichever coach supplied it.
Maia is feeling that too. You’d offered to drop her off afterward so Uncle Doug could slip away early, and although she needs to get back home so she can pack up and leave for Santa Cruz, you’re both too parched to look that far forward.
Driving down East Stockton Blvd like you had after so many baseball game at Brown Diamond in your life, you reach the intersection and decide to stop at the KFC on the corner. You order two gigantic sized sodas—you get a Pepsi, she orders a Dr. Pepper—and they are so gargantuan that driving while holding yours seems almost dangerous. You pull out of the drive through and into the adjacent lot. You park facing Big Lots.
You’ve been melting at the same event for hours, but this is your first chance to actually talk. A few months later, she’ll introduce you at the Teacher of the Year banquet, but you’ve forgotten about all of that stuff in the moment. The A/C is blowing at full blast, you’re sipping large gulps of pure sugar from a cup too big to be as cheap as it was, and you’re still riding the relieving glow of that fifth straight championship, but you keep scratching at those long purple socks.
“I always love these socks,” you say. “But damn do they get hot.”
Your socks are purple. Of course they are purple: they are baseball socks you purchased for coaching at school. As always, you pair them with blacks and silvers that should evoke the Sacramento Kings but instead evoke the school and baseball team.
Eleven months earlier, you were both wearing baseball socks, coaching the all-star tournament in similar sweltering heat.
Twenty-three months earlier, you were wearing those same purple baseball socks but while sitting on the bleachers at the varsity field. Maia was in the booth running the scoreboard. Joe was wearing baseball socks too, pitching a scoreless inning that included a wicked curveball for strike three. That was Joe’s last inning.
The socks comment shifts the conversation to Joe. Even with the air blasting on the two of you, your cups have both become slick with moisture. You watch the condensation “Hey Steele” slowly expand on one spot just below your thumb. You think that it looks like liquid trying to escape.
“Sometimes it’s so heavy,” she says, staring at Big Lots just like you. “He’s always right there. I still feel him there. All the time. It hurts.”
“I can still hear her voice,” you say. “Katelyn’s. I hear it all the time.”
“Yeah.”
“It hurts. I know it shouldn’t, but it does and—“
“Good.”
“Good?” you ask after a long swig of soda that you’ve gotten deep enough into to find the sweetness diluted by melting ice and you’re not sure why you put on a question “Hey Steele” mark on it because you would never doubt Maia’s sincerity, especially not on this, but you really just want her to explain because your roles have suddenly reversed in the Big Lots parking lot where she is now your teacher while she downs Dr. Pepper.
“The hurting is good. I don’t ever want to stop hurting. Never. The hurting is proof that he isn’t gone. That he hasn’t disappeared.”
You rub “Hey Steele” your sternum instinctively.
She looks over at you and takes a massively loud slurp that is so impossibly her that you’d laugh if you weren’t already crying.
“I wanna hurt forever,” she says.
“Forever.” You add no question mark this time.
Maia shakes her cup, sending beads of condensation all over the dashboard. You hear a gentle plop on the “Hey Steele” gear column in between you and can’t tell if it was from her sloshing cup or your tears.
“I’m afraid I might not,” you say. Or maybe you just think it.
She takes a futile slurp from her emptied cup. You offer her your “Hey Steele” Pepsi, but she waves it off.
“She had this way of, like, talking to herself while she was taking tests. It was like she was coaching herself through it. You could tell when she figured something out because she’d get this excited grin.”
She shakes her cup “Hey Steele” again.
“I shouldn’t hurt this much. I didn’t know her that well and…” You “Hey Steele” trail “Hey Steele” off “Hey Steele” and “Hey Steele” listen “Hey Steele” as “Hey Steele” your “Hey Steele” tears “Hey Steele” smack “Hey Steele” the “Hey Steele” lid “Hey Steele” of “Hey Steele” your “Hey Steele” cup.
“Hey Steele” She “Hey Steele” slurps “Hey Steele” without “Hey Steele” success “Hey Steele” one “Hey Steele” more “Hey Steele” time.
“No,” she says, gently, her trademark intensity absent. “No. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Hey Steele” You gasp “Hey Steele” for air. “Hey Steele”
“I don’t want her voice to go away. I don’t wanna lose it. Please tell me I—“
She shakes her head.
“You won’t. This hurts forever. That’s the trick. It never goes away.”
“Hey Steele” You hold your eyes “Hey Steele” on hers, looking for the inauthenticity “Hey Steele” of a false promise that is not there. “Hey Steele” There is only truth.
You lift your straw to your mouth and slurp the “Hey Steele” remaining Pepsi until it has all been vacuumed down your esophagus and “Hey Steele” into your stomach. You close your eyes and you are climbing the bleachers again.
“Hey Steele,” calls out a familiar voice.
You open your eyes. Maia is staring at Big Lots so you do too. You shake your now-empty cup once and then sigh.
“It still hurts.”
She nods.
“I still hear her voice.”
She looks at you for just a second, then nods one more time.
“Good.” She says it so matter-of-factly that it becomes reality as soon as it leaves her lips.
You sit in silent pain together.
It is good.
*****
DAVINA
Hi Davina,
This isn’t that letter. I will always write that after dropping off the flowers. It doesn’t make sense to write before that, because I don’t know what I’ll find while I linger in front of her tree. Nope: I’ll start writing the moment I return to the classroom on Friday and finish it over the course of the day.
It’s weird right now because I’m thinking about what I want to say to you here in a way that I never have before. A part of that is because we both know this short letter I’m writing to you is to you but is also delivering to other people, but I think the other part is simply that I hold my grief tightly to my chest until I can share it with you. Writing this—all of this—now has meant my grief has surfaced early and I don’t have the catharsis of playing my playlist and carrying flowers to the memorial garden as a retroactive pallbearer with you on the other side of her metaphorical coffin.
In 2020, I made my little pilgrimage alone. I had emailed the VPs to make sure I could come onto campus and received the green light. There were definitely people on campus when I appeared, but I was wholly alone. It wasn’t an oppressive sort of alone, but I was undeniably alone. The world could have melted into gray nothingness and I wouldn’t have noticed while there at her tree. I think the world will always be gray nothingness while I am there, so greedily do I gaze at the green of the plants prowling around her plaque, but I won’t ever see it. I didn’t on April 28, 2020.
I found your story on the attendance document after I got home. I always read through that during lunch, pretending it was a packed classroom of buzzing people eating cafeteria food. I felt different immediately, but especially so when I sent the photo of the flowers on Google Classroom.
We’ve talked before about memorials and visibility. I’d bet that’s why our exchange that day left such an impression on me: I leave the flowers in the hope that they are seen by someone. I want that person who visits and inevitably knew her to feel the opposite of the loneliness I initially felt that morning. I want them to feel emboldened; I want them to have permission to embrace the loss that still resides in their chests because literal flowers at her spot on this day confirm others still feel her loss in their chests too. I wanted someone to see those flowers, and then you did. Remotely though it was, you saw them, and, through that seeing and through your initial message itself, you gifted me the same permission.
You said once that you dread this day, and I understand that feeling. In many ways, I think I’ve underestimated how much I dread it because, all week, emotion has been pouring out of me. It bubbles up in unexpected moments. I find it stuck to other feelings and emotions. This morning, as I was thinking about you and this prompt and about Katelyn, the dread attached itself to “right where you left me” as it played and I realized that I’ll never hear the song the same way again. Suddenly “You left me no choice but to stay here forever” is independent of the breakup story Taylor actually tells and it’s me saying “Help, I’m still at the restaurant, sitting in a corner I haunt” as I see myself looking down at her plaque and reading her name and letting that sound of her voice “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” “Hey Steele” play in my ear. And I can hear them in the track, I could swear she’s there in the production. Everybody moved on I, I stayed there because there’s no choice but to stay here forever, the rest of the song is gone now because I’m the girl who got frozen, who lives in delusion, and I know the lyrics break from there and I should be hearing what is actually being said and sung, but I can’t. The song isn’t about this, and her voice isn’t anywhere but in my head saying “Hey Steele” like she did every morning of Honors Pre-Cal but that I can only hold onto from that one night, that one last time I happened to pass by her on the bleachers, but she left me no choice but to stay here forever, forever grieving, forever awash in emotion that just exploded out of my heart, unearned emotion because she was your friend and I was just her teacher who admired her pluck and how she buckled down and talked to herself and brought flowers that one time before we knew each other. It hurts as much to remember her as it does to remember losing her. It’s all glass shattered on the white cloth.
But, if I stop to think about it, I don’t think I can use the word “dread” to describe the approach of the 28th. It was dread—it definitely was in 2019 and 2020–but it hasn’t been that since then. The emotional outpouring is the same, but I don’t dread the pain of returning to this restaurant of remembrance. I’m still at the restaurant, sitting in a corner I haunt cross-legged in the dim light. They say “What a sad sight” but I don’t hear them or see them because I’m not alone at the table looking across at an empty booth. You’re right there too, two people left with no choice but to stay here forever. And there should be this crushing burden to be left behind in that restaurant, but it’s nice to sit there with you and know that we both feel that booth’s emptiness. There’s someone to help me collect the fractured chunks of glass in a napkin. I relish having someone to talk to in that corner we haunt.
The pain of remembering means she’s still there, still here, in my heart and yours, in our hearts, and that’s what was missing before. Since reaching out to you, I’ve chosen to embrace this pain. I haven’t felt alone with it for even one single instant because I’ve known you are out there, and, although you are my destination the moment I rise on April 28th, I could send you a message at any time. It’s magic, Davina. It’s magic to have closed my eyes in the corner booth of a restaurant I didn’t want to eat at one moment and then open them up in the next and have you there with me. The only thing tying us together is a person who isn’t here and that thread between us should be hollow and it should rip my fingers apart when I hold it, but it doesn’t because it’s in your hands too.
We have no choice but to stay here forever, but I’m so so grateful to be sharing this booth with you. You have no idea what it means to me to stay here forever with you.
Love,
Steele
PS: I fear that I just ruined “right where you left me” for you. If so, I apologize. But please know that I will never hear one of my favorite songs again without hearing Katelyn’s voice in the chords.
And I’ll never hear it again without thinking of you.
*****
R’LYEH
You will put your headphones in, grab the bouquets, and begin your pilgrimage.
There will be no emotion as you pass the M building.
There will be no emotion as you pass the N building.
It will find you when you reach the bike rack. You will remember how awful this pilgrimage is. You will regard the tiny strip of concrete between still-emerging trees with apprehension, wondering how it was that so many had packed that space on the one-year anniversary. You will remember the voices that spoke and you will remember her mother’s shudder when she spoke. You will remember that space full of people and you will remember the vigil outside the library when you swayed back and forth staring at the blown up photo and realized she’d never take a senior portrait. You will remember wondering when the vigil would end but also remember that time had stopped functioning then and there forever in the same way time is broken because it takes twenty-nine steps to pass the bike rack and reach the garden but yet you are living every moment simultaneously in real-time while four measures of a song play.
There were so many people then and then.
There will be just you today.
You will rue that your visit doesn’t conjure memories of her. You will wish you could relive those moments, such tiny insignificant moments that became touchstones and core memories retroactively, but all you will feel here is loss. Her voice will not float like a butterfly on the notes of the songs you will play. You will strain your eyes to picture her, to remember her defining animation, but you will find only still-life.
You will remove the plastic wrap from the bouquets of flowers. You didn’t the first two years, but you realized that, if you leave only the flowers, they will break down and sink into the ivy that surrounds the trees. She isn’t buried here, but you find something poetic about your flowers growing old there in a way that she will not.
You will stare at the words and dates on her plaque. You will ignore the people filing into the school, the drivers dropping off and the staff members arriving and the sun shining and the time passing as you crouch suspended in grief staring at the final marker of this vibrant life being so fucking inert in a way she never was, even when taking a test. You will try to make sense of what it all means, what any of it means, and you will cry even though you will already be dehydrated because you will have felt this day for so many days before it finally mercifully cruelly heartbreakingly arrives, but none of your thoughts will be complete. This is not life you will honor but death, death you will mark in a way that isn’t right for this person whose life yours barely brushed but whom you will never get out of your head because you were so excited that you were going to be her Calculus teacher and watch her keep thrilling in every success she earned and it will be so tragic that she will forever be this important to you in a way that she could never have understood because it was the finality of her death that transposed your affection into words words words words you would never have found there with her but that you did without her.
You will break down at some point, shedding tears for those who will not be with you but whom you know will be rubbing their chests and feeling cavities in their hearts too. These flowers will be their flowers too. They will be yours and Davina’s but also everyone else’s who packed that place for the anniversary and also all the attendees’ at the vigil that night you couldn’t let go of and who couldn’t let go of you. You will watch your tears strike the concrete and you will credit their volume to the collective grief of the multitude you will stand for in this moment and will keep standing for as long as you can stand.
You will not be self-conscious. In fact, you will hope someone is watching. You will hope someone is watching and later creeps into the garden like the ivy on the ground to read the plaque. You will hope people see that this etched name is not simply etched on that plaque but on at least one heart.
You will know when it is time. Your body—your knees and back and even your heavy, wounded, cavity-bearing chest—will tell you it is time. You will bring your index and middle fingers to your lips and then press them to the plaque.
You will stand creakily upright and wobble under the emotion, but when you are stable you will take several photos so that you will have choices to send to Davina later. You will shuffle toward the gate and pay your respects to Akira and Joe, but then you will march out the way you came, keeping your eyes on her name on her plaque until your neck can’t crane anymore as you emerge into the quad.
“Hey Steele,” you will hear her say on the final night of her life but every one for the rest of your own.
“Bye Katelyn,” you will whisper.
It will not be a goodbye because she will never leave you and you will start your letter to Davina when you get back and you will let the memories that will flood back to you, the actual memories of Katelyn so beautifully alive, surround you as grapple with the tragic finity of it all. You will cry but mostly you will feel safe because you will remember not just Katelyn but the physical proximity of Michelle on the couch and Maia in the parking lot and Davina in your inbox and the others that are a part of this journey too, part of an unspoken ever-grieving collective you speak for on this day until infinity as the counterpoint to Katelyn’s lack thereof. You will get lost in this torrent of emotion and will get swallowed up by the remembering and greedy grief and relish every moment of that pain until you will finally feel your distance from Katelyn, a distance that spans space and time in spite of your custodianship of her memory. That distance will begin to crush you once again.
The door from the pod will open then. It will open then like it has every year not swallowed up by COVID. R’lyeh will walk in with his arms open.
His hug will end one leg of this eternal journey. His hug will begin the next.
Sometimes you just need a hug.
“The students all leave,” he will say. “It’s up to us to remember her.”
You will hold onto him with the same ferocious gratitude you do her voice before finally speaking.
“Yes. It is.”
I actually recorded an hour of spoken reflection about this piece and what it is about. I’m still not sure what to do with that recording, so if that interests you, please let me know. In the meantime, thank you so much for reading this. I extend my deepest gratitude to Michelle, Maia, Davina, and R’lyeh for granting me permission to authentically tell their segments of my story about evolving grief; each of you has left an immeasurable, invaluable mark on my heart. Truly, truly: thank you.