The who that you were.

In search of an old Shu Uemura makeup bag, I found a
journal from 1996. It is a big fat Mead notebook with a red cover, and the spine
barely holds the pages together. I recognize her, this girl who sang, “I get
high in my low-assed bootcut jeans,” who wrote, “I will not only dine under the
stars, I will taste them.”

She also
wrote:

“961213. Friday, the day curling
up.

Not even I know how deep down the pain
goes. I feel emptied, turned over and shaken, then ignored on a grimy table in
some shitty bar. Love, I know I’ll get over this and the rain will still fall.
But now it’s the emptiness ruling. The disbelief that there will be another such
as you to share with me the blood running strong, the burning, the road to
nowhere exactly, the blue blue sky. You were my pole star, and I feel adrift
now, steering blind.”

“9/20/95
16:53

It was not too far off to assume that
she liked writing letters a lot more than actually living a life to write
about.”

And a quick poem from October
15, 1996:

Who abandons these
cars

and allows them to live
anew:

cat motels, dust
magnets,

flutes when the city’s hot
winds

go through one cracked
window

then
another:

who? And who smears hasty
hearts

on all those
windshields,

made-to-fade messages of
love

to Veronica or just
anyone

passing by? Take a
number,

then any
street,

find that door and knock on
it.

Whoever answers can
be

the woman who is always the
question,

freshly arrived from the
airport,

smelling of lavender
and

sex on the
beach.

“Who are you?” she asks,
and

dizzy with love, you can’t
answer.