Twenty-One
Since BEST FRIEND died, I’ve struggled to write. There have been other things that have gone on, other discouragers that have accumulated collectively, but her death was it – THE BIG ONE. If not the biggest one. This blog was (and is) an attempt to reignite the spark in my imagination, but also the passion to write, because all of it nowadays seems largely (if not spectacularly) meaningless. (As an aside, the most recent book I’ve had published, This [MidnightSun Publishing 2023], was actually originally written in 2016, then revised periodically, with the biggest redraft occurring at the KSP Retreat in March 2020, right before Covid crippled the world.) I’ve…
Three
It’s not my friend’s voice I hear. It’s male – nasal, but sharp, like an electrical current that has been shaped into language, but also reverberating in a filter to produce a tight echo. And low. It might be coming from my left shoulder, but directed into my ear, worming into my head, startling me not just because they’re words in the middle of the night, but because they grate. I can’t process this the way I would other words. They have a serrated quality that saws through my mind. There are so many things the voice sounds like, so many things it can be, but none of these descriptions…