Before the hand
protects the heart
with its tight fist again

– Sam Hamill
Your presence was a thread that kept me connected to my youth, winding back over so many years through the maze of our lives, a constant in a world of ephemera. Now severed, I stand helplessly, feeling lost and old.

Your life and mine were woven together with the thread of countless shared experiences. Now wide asunder, loose stitches hanging uselessly, revealing the emptiness at the heart of existence that our feeble tapestries are meant to hide.

Blurry eyes, bitter hands. Needle and thread, begin again.