By chris Date: 2007 Apr 16 Comment on this Work [[2007.04.16.21.07.22937]] |
In the everlasting New York winter cold, we met at one of my father's conventions for something I can't remember anymore. It was Bear Mountain State Park, and was it really always dark back then? Some things are clear: January, 1981. John Lennon had just been shot a half hour away in front of the Dakota building - a place I thought was haunted and now I knew for sure. I was eight years old and you were too, the daughter of a good friend of the family we haven't seen in twenty years. All I recall clearly was that we decided to get married someday and that you had short blonde hair that looked like it glowed against the snow that was collecting on the windowsills. (Nothing's been the same.) Still, some questions remain: Did you pass the bar on your first attempt and end up married with a single child and two golden retrievers on the Upper East Side? Did you drop out of art school and disappear into Death Valley, seeking visions and sketching caliche and alkali? Which is true? (I was there last summer and saw no trace of you.) But time erases all traces; with enough time and space someday when I hear the name Miranda I will think only of Shakespeare's play and shipwrecks where everyone survives. |