WORKS ON DIGITAL PAPER

Mott Street

This weekend I was not startled to find John is dying quickly of the sort of cancer they refer to as "all over the place." It was made clear that he will be dead soon. Few older male figures from my youth cut the same shape for me as John and he still represents a sort of damn-it-all corked-up energy that feeds my imagination. John once busted me in high school on a morning after a big teen-movie style parents-on-vacation blow out. He showed up at the front door, kicked aside the empty beer cans littering the walkway before ringing the door bell and booting all the stragglers out of the house. To this day, his knify glare and tight lipped expulsions strike me as the very nexus of adult authority.
As with most things from my youth, I haven't seen him in many years. Probably the last time was a decade ago. I remember that last meeting he drew the same quick smile he alway drew. He flicked about the same sparkle in his eyes between those playfully parenthetical creases he always did. The thinly mussed slicked-back silver hair topped darting movements as robust as ever, a sort of kinetic understanding which constantly betrayed his smaller size as simply a carriage for something larger. And, of course, he wore that same Pacific Northwest island wind-worn sweatshirt jeans boat shoe combo that will be his wardrobe as ghost as it was in life. His voice, not deep, but with a gravel to make it seem so, still bounces between my ears where it will forever ring.