blemish raze her father is feeding two black dogs. in all the pictures he's taken of them, they seem to be smiling. he shows me his boots. cracked cowhide. i tell him they're beautiful. he asks how that can be. it's like an old guitar, i say. think of the instrument as a person. each song that strikes its strings is a story being told. whatever you hear becomes a part of who you are. the moments we're marked by might seem insignificant to someone with unblemished skin, but our scars are everything to us. he asks if i have any guitars like that. a few, i say. he can't remember the name of his favourite song. gone to some place it won't be called back from. just a wisp of wordless melody. when we run out of things to say, i leave him to what he hasn't yet lost and wait for my ride in the rain. 241026 what's it to you? who go blather from