The day we gathered to remember you, fires rampaged across our state as the diablo winds whipped October and stories circled like whirling leaves

I am no longer all bones and angles. My sharp points have been sanded smooth, gently curved into a softer version of my former self.

… even this late, it comes — the knowing, the unbearable laid true for five years: you are gone.

You don’t notice the dying leaving
when they really choose to leave you.

Though we appear to die, we do not. Death is merely a change of address …