The painter's continual search is for a place to welcome the absent. If he finds a place, he arranges it and prays for the face of the absent to appear.
-John Berger, in Studio Talk (for Miguel Barcelo) in The Shape of a Pocket
Note for the dead boy: That is what I am doing today and everyday. When I write a sentence and cross it out, when I rerrange the fragments of a narrative, or leap from astronomy to forensics to archaeology, digging for evidence that links me to my past, to you and your past, to a story longer and larger than the both of us. I wander the Portland streets, but my heels and toes do not touch the same sidewalk as you. I am lost, searching for a way to make your absence look back at me, with a gaze so heartbreaking it's worth it.