Recently I met up with friends from school that I hadn't seen in decades. They are still beautiful, still full of life and stories. At one point we were talking about how we exchanged high school rings. My friend repeated my name and I realized how long it's been since someone knew my middle name or could pronounce the "ei" vowels of my last name correctly.
I wondered what I may have missed in all this time. A sense of connection to the person I once was and still am? A connection to friends who populated my life in my early years? A new nostalgia returns though my teenage years were not my happiest. I plodded through the illness of my mother, the isolation of a small rural town and emerged safe despite forays into dangerous and not so dangerous places.
Here's a piece that's in it's earliest form:
The eternal Ibizza like party
of my forebearers
immigrants lost all,
AM bodies fallen
from reveries
A grubby child
sent to church
to be an angel on
the life raft of God
Who's been saved?
I peek from under
folded arms,
only my hand unraised,
my arm slack.
