picking up the pieces

ONE OF MY PATIENTS is a young man, twenty years old, who sustained a brain injury last year after shooting himself in the head. He can’t remember how it happened, which is commonly the case with injuries of this magnitude. There’s often a chunk of memory from the days or hours leading up to the injury that’s lost, as well as a period of time after the injury during which the person cannot remember any details. Sometimes the amnesia goes back for months, often erasing major events such as getting married, the loss of a family member or having children. In this case, he can't recall what led him to shoot himself, so it has remained somewhat of a mystery.

nutria skull

rose hill

BEFRIENDED a roadrunner on my bike ride up Rose Hill this morning. This is not a dream. I actually met a roadrunner. Ok, maybe befriended is too strong a word, but we definitely had a moment together.

author note

STEPHEN KING likens the job of a writer to that of an archaeologist. He’s come to the conclusion, after writing the books he’s written, that writers don’t make up stories as much as they unbury them:

visitation

A CROW cawed. We’re haunted by crows, I thought. But the thought escaped me before I finished thinking it. Then the crow left.

the sunrise

THE SUNRISE was pink glaze scraped across lavender gingerbread, a nuclear orange jellybean playing peek-a-boo through the treeline. It was rippling lavender bayou water mirroring the sky’s pink sugar. It was a duo of bluejays reconnoitering overhead, squawking like pterodactyls.

inscription

The vine of time is no straight line,

             and the dead still speak if we know how to listen.