love, Marie

Dear world without Dad,

It's on days like this that I find solace in art.  Mom and I were sitting on the couch holding hands and we reminded me of Los Dos Fridas.  Do you know that painting?  It's by Frida Kahlo, one of my favorites.

Brother gave me two of Dad's old pocket knives and a flashlight, two flashlights.

I have been having a craving for my favorite Brenda Hillman poem, "First Tractate" of Death Tractates.  It starts like this.

First Tractate

That the soul got to choose. Nothing else
got to but the soul
got to choose.
That it was very clever, stepping
from Lightworld to lightworld
as an egret fishes through its smeared reflections —

through its deaths —
for it believed in the one life,
that it would last forever.