Lately I've been looking at the bodies around me in terms of what distinctive geological formation they resemble. The large dark woman on the train- an old mountain range. A fair slender girl looked as if she were the great plains. Grandfathers, businessmen- deserts, swamps.

There were a few times this summer I found myself in the woods at night, and I would look up through the branches. I do not know how many layers of stars the human eye is capable of seeing, I could not imagine any more. I only held my breath. One instance maybe a cloud carried the vision away and in another maybe it lasted a few moments longer but each time you were there. Someday I'll have the courage to say what I see.

Everything for a reason and nothing for a reason and everything for a reason. Clanking, clanking, and clanking of trains and also borrowed cognac and unkept promises of dislodged teeth. I hear in everything the soft burning of leaves so that the air tastes old and dry- so that it crackles. My mother leaving. My mother going away and my father holding me a little longer, tighter, softer. Grandpa holding my hand a little sadder, quieter, impossibly. They say I'll look back here. I will know this woman, but she won't know me. Then they say I'll look back at this place, and I'll know this woman, but she will not know me. 

I had a dream that a tree grew up my spine. The wind blew it as a seed, and one day the bombarding rain bore it deep into the bone of my left big toe. The pressure grew as the stone expanded, and from its shell ascended a spiraling vine braiding through my fibula, wrapping up my femur. The veins of it's leaves mirrored my capillaries. The fresh green of the blades met the deep red of my organs and washed me in brown. Heavy brown. Strong brown and then it discovered my vertebrae. As the plant weaved into me I found I could not bend down my back for my uncertainties, neither could my shoulders fall the same. Everything thrust back and up, and a secure yet expanding sapling became my spinal column, its finger branches became eyelashes. Sprout tendrils pulled gently at my lids, then there I awoke. Breathing softly. 

The word permeated comes to mind. Internal scars, saturated memory. This melancholy arrives and it envelopes our days and prickles our spines. 

My friend, I've loved you all my life.