kinship raze when i caught some of the calligraphy katie coaxed out of porcelain and chalk at a local fresh food market, i saw myself pressing handbills into damp palms. carbon copies of a still_life animated film. i told her about the biggest gig of my life and asked if she'd be willing to draw me something. she didn't want any money. i sent her some songs and told her some stories and let her sit with it all for a while. she had tree lines dancing in her head. she settled on cicadas. she said their summer songs brought her back to her childhood. she told me everything she knew about them. how they live underground for years before they surface and shed their old selves to become something new. how most people think they're sleeping the whole time they're under the dirt, when really they're eating and digging tunnels and living their best lives. how she felt a kind of kinship with them. she drew two stomach singers on a bed of roots and shoots. she inked stars and a sliver of moon above their heads. and though the show i shoved my soul into fell apart weeks before the dress rehearsal, sunk by the staggering indifference of my so-called friends, i was left with a beautiful reminder of what might have been, quarried from the soul of someone i barely knew. 250304 what's it to you? who go blather from