2023-06-03

ms. ile

I remember her rolling her head counter-clockwise while I ran my fingers through her hair and massaged her scalp. Her eyes were shut. She purred like that cat we left sleeping on the edge of her desk in the slow storm of late-afternoon dust motes. Her neck smelled like peach orchards. She had this way of talking that sounded like a radio broadcast fighting through a half-century of static. Everything about her was relaxed. Everything but her shoulders; I tried to calm them, but her shoulders had this restless energy always shifting in search of the perfect trajectory that would eventually launch her out of my life and into a dazzling Pacific blue sky I could never fathom.

She has been rising ever since...And I miss her all the time.