karen raze i had a dream she died. she died in the dream. but i didn't see it happen. in the dream she lived a few houses down. in the dream i learned from the street. i talked to a woman i didn't know but who knew her. i said it made no sense. she was young. she seemed to be in good health. there was no reason for her to die. there were two unframed pictures of her there on the sidewalk, half-forgotten things, free things, so i took one to remember her by. the face and expression kept changing. it never looked like her, but it was her. inside i talked to her ghost. "i've got no gums," she said. "my dad was a clown. i don't wanna take biaxin." she was a quiet ghost, but she talked a lot. someone wrote a book about her life, wrote about the way they tormented her in a mental hospital, the way they cut slits in her socks at the sides to get at her feet. she told me none of it was true. anyone can write anything they want about you. none of it has to be true. i was talking to her and she was dead and she was there and she was gone, and i wished i'd known her better before she was a ghost, but it comforted me that she was talking to me, because ghosts don't have to do that. then i woke up and found out she was alive and it was her birthday. i wanted to say, "happy birthday. don't ever die." but she wouldn't have understood. she wasn't there to see herself as a ghost. 150207 ... raze next time i see her, we'll do figurative cartwheels. 150526 ... raze i'm not sure if cartwheels did happen (that's the thing about keeping them figurative … they're hard to spot), but she said, "you write really well for cello." that's a nice and surprising thing to hear when you don't think of yourself as someone who writes anything for anything, aside from your own intuitive fumbling. i'm thankful for people like her, who allow me to do things i didn't think i could do. 150531 what's it to you? who go blather from