patron saint of switchblade fights

The Star Trek title card generator is over here:

The sitemaker (Josh Mayfield at https://bsky.app/profile/bean525.bsky.social) has asked for people to come in and kick its tires so he can work out any bugs they turn up. So do give him a hand, if you feel inclined. :)

(also, deeply amused by this one...)

People get really into bird watching but here's a secret: bugs are WAY easier to find than birds and they let you get a lot closer.

It's Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026. The semester winds to a close. In two weeks, I will have finals. I will say my goodbyes. I will pack the contents of my room into cardboard boxes, and one by one haul those boxes onto the bus before dumping them unceremoniously into a storage facility a few blocks away. Maybe moving wouldn't be so difficult if I were accustomed to it. Consolidating everything I own into a handful of FedEx boxes does not come naturally to me but it's a practice I'll perfect. This is what your 20s are for, I've been told. Learning to rent a room.

I have written before, about place and memory, when place is no longer a physical space for your body to occupy but merely a specter of recollection. Does it sound like I'm talking out of my ass? I'm not writing for anyone else. I swear, I won't let you see this. Yes, you, with your vampire teeth and pretty eyes. How could I be honest? How could I admit that I woke up this morning and instinctively reached for you? Who knows, maybe I'll drunkenly confess that it was disappointing when I rolled over to face your gently sleeping form in the early morning light and found only unoccupied pillows.

Who am I kidding. All I ever am is honest. You said I inspired you to write and tried to show me, but I refused to read it. Sometimes the knowledge of observation taints the purity of the thought. Some things are best left between you - an anonymous Tumblr blog - and the indifferent world wide web. It's nothing personal.

But it's cold out for April, I walked into the bathroom to splash some water on my face and got a whiff of that 7 AM chilled-overnight petrichor scent. Very Halloween. So I thought about October, how the months stretched out before me like a dark and insurmountable tower. And now, with all my money spent, eaten, smoked, drank, given, tossed into fountains and flushed down the toilet. With all my whims indulged, I prepare to wander South like kind of goddamn homing pigeon. Force of habit. Second nature. Except, that tugging in my gut is no longer calling me back to Oklahoma.

I will tell you that a compass, when placed next to a strong magnet, will impede the device's ability to locate True North. Which I say, not because you are that magnet, not because you have blind-sighted me or screwed up my intuition...but because you have allowed me to finally break out of my magnetic stupor. Cut-loose and aimless, or, whatever I said the first time. This summer I will take the train down to Texas and I will board the cheapest flight to Boston. You make Montreal sound like Atlantis. You'll take me there. (Once you told me you wanted to take me to every beautiful place you'd ever been). I don't speak a word of French but I'm learning Spanish. I want to sing the songs you love together, stoned out of our minds on a Tuesday night. Dile ya a tus papás que no vas a regresar, te vas con un loco que no te para de amar.

But you are not why I picked up my laptop to write for the first time in months. God knows, I've written enough about you already.

It's just that last night got me thinking about home again.

You and I were on the bus with a friend, headed downtown to catch our connection back to campus. Final bus of the night. As we pulled into a stop, an elderly woman gingerly hobbled on, slowly, as though the ground beneath her was shaking. Her eyes were obscured by sunglasses but her lips were pursed in an unmistakeable expression of perplexed anxiety. In her hands, a canvas grocery bag adorned with pictures of smiling produce. She wandered past the bus driver like a ghost and sat down a ways away from us. My friend and I joked conversationally, and the woman turned to face us, perhaps assuming that we were laughing at her. I couldn't see her eyes through the dark shades but I didn't have to. I'd seen them before. I'd know them anywhere. She spoke softly but unmistakably, "Are you afraid of me?"

That sobered me up like a cold plunge. My friend reassured her that we were not afraid of her, and asked if she was lost.

"Should I move and sit by you?" she asked earnestly.

"What?" She repeated herself. "Of course, if you want to..." my friend answered, unsure of what to say. She feebly stumbled up the aisle of the moving train, white-knuckling the backs of the seats for support before finding one across from me. The next stop was ours. The bus slowed to a halt, as we rose to make our way out onto the curb.

"You can't get off the bus yet..." she said, but rose with us anyway. You stopped in your tracks and looked at her, kindly,

"This is our stop ma'am, it's not your stop. Where are you going?" She blinked at you, clearly unsure. You asked again. "Where are you going?"

"Home." The bus had been stopped for several minutes, the doors were closing over and over again. I jammed them open.

"Where is that, do you know where that is?"

She concentrated, thinking hard. "Hillsboro."

"Okay, get off at the next stop and take the green line." You replied. Her face remained unchanged. She continued to stare vacantly at us, as though we were going to lead her back to wherever she came from. Whenever she came from. Whatever specter of recollection she thought she was returning to. You told her again. "Get off at the next stop and take the green line," but it fell on deaf ears. "Not this stop, the next one, get on the green line." She nodded absently. She hadn't heard you.

I knew she wasn't getting home when I let the door snap shut like an executioner's blade.

We watched from the sidewalk as she lowered herself into a seat by the window and stared, unseeing, into the passing night. As the engine roared to life and the bus drove on, leaving in its wake only silence and a steadily mounting guilt.

I regret very few things in my life.

When I was 16, a homeless woman approached me while I was reading in a park and asked if I had a pocket knife. She needed to fix the rags she had used to bind her feet. I had no knife, but offered her my car keys as a consolation. I looked down and noticed that we had similarly sized shoes. Give her yours, chimed the voice in my head. It would be easy to cover up. Maybe I forgot them in the swim team locker room and they'd been stolen, I was always losing things. Besides, I had other shoes. And at this point I had the money to buy more shoes, identical shoes, even. If I really wanted to. They were old beat up converse decorated with faded sharpie doodles of the solar system, constellations, song lyrics (I exist, I exist, I exist). They were a little too small. I didn't need them. It was the right thing to do. It was the good thing to do. I really didn't need them.

She handed me back my keys, thanked me, and walked away. I didn't chase her down. I didn't even try. I walked back to the parking lot, still wearing my shoes, and felt sick to my stomach with self-disgust. And still, I drove away.

So I tell myself now that the bus driver, or a passenger, or some other good samaritan surely must have noticed the woman and called the authorities. I tell myself that she found her way into a bed. Perhaps, herself, a homing pigeon. Sleepwalking back into her memories.

I think about my mom's relative, the old man who'd sat on the freezing curb waiting for a bus that wasn't coming. He was still waiting patiently when a jogger found him in the morning, glassy eyed and unbreathing.

I've never seen a dead body.

I've experienced loss, but only at a distance. Only after it was incinerated and carried away with the wind, or with water, or with time.

Today, I will pretend it's Halloween. I will make believe we have months ahead of us. I will get too drunk and fall into your arms and say it again, for the thousandth time, although this time I will really mean it. I don't want to go back to Oklahoma. This is not to say that I don't want to go home, love. I don't want to leave it.

I wonder, when I am old and empty and waiting on the freezing curb for a bus that isn't coming, where will I be going?

Back to you?

Happy Halloween.

This is what your life is for, I've been told. Learning to give everything away.

my collection grows