tied raze i remember her face but not her name. she called herself sarah when she was on the phone. that was a lie to save the person on the other end of the line the trouble of trying to speak the truth. she was from bulgaria. on a list of bulgarian feminine given names, i see antoniya, kalina, desislava, nadezhda, snezana, and three or four dozen more. all of them end with the first letter i learned to write as a child. none of them are her. we used to get ten-dollar vouchers for a local cineplex when we left our quota in the dust. i must have been saddled with six of the things when i was on a hot streak. i still have some. the ones that are gone i gave to her. any ponytail i tried to tie was always spilling out of whatever scrunchy or elastic i wrapped around my fingers. she taught me to snake my hair through the spiral and double it over. to fix it in place. such a small, simple thing. but love has been built on less. 241004 ... ovenbird I have known you since you were a baby. My son spent only six weeks on this earth without you before you arrived to be his best friend. You are thirteen, already taller than me, and about to go to high school. Your father is approaching late stage dementia. All these things are true but some truths are heavier than others. Your mother bought you a tie for graduation. You held it in your hands like some dead thing. “Dad can’t tie this anymore,” you said and grief came to stand beside you. Your father’s hands no longer remember the path the knot takes and your hands have not yet learned. You know, now, that your father will never teach you this simple thing and you don’t want to wear the tie at all. You don’t want your best friend’s father to tie the tie. You don’t want to have to say that your own father can’t do it. You don’t want anyone to know what you have already lost and how much losing there is left to do. So your mother takes the tie, says “the only reason I can’t do this is gendered bullshit” and finds a video online that shows her how to make the knot. She ties the tie. The tie hangs from your neck and lays against your heart and you feel things too large to understand–all this buckling, prising, grief stricken love. 250620 what's it to you? who go blather from