wallet belly fire upon the skin of his wallet the scribblings of his girlfriend curled and frantic indentations of her poetry I was writing about a man with a long, aged beard his dreads down to his ankles playing ball hockey with the boys 040814 ... kerry the first gift i gave you was a wallet. practical since yours was falling apart, but intimate too, something to live in your pocket, to fill with essentials and random receipts and frequent shopper cards. i invited my dad to go shopping with me. it was easier to get him out of the house back then, especially during the holidays. he likes a mission though, likes to feel useful, isn’t the aimless wanderer i am. “i’ve got bad news for you. i’ve got to find this today and it’s going to be something i can actually afford so we’re going to the mall.” “dear god.” “i have a list of stores. i know exactly what i want. we’ll hit it and quit it, promise.” there were two huge shopping malls nearly across the street from each other. one was known as being especially chic, with stores so expensive they hardly needed customers to stay open. but people don’t go to malls as much anymore anyway. leather, trifold. leather so it would break in and become soft and fit you like an old pair of levi’s. trifold for the size, and ideally brown. i don’t know why. [i half looked for, found and wanted desperately to be able to get for you an eel skin wallet, though i know it’s kind of strange and grotesque. ellen had vintage eel skin wallet so long ago and i was surprised by how smooth it was, surprised by the fact that i was drawn to it.] we tried several stores. dad behaved, stayed cheerful. we complained about the cloying stench of the perfume, we mocked, sneered, snickered. i’d never been inside a neiman marcus before. the layout was sparce and seemed like the ceiling was higher somehow, we took the escalator to the second floor in near silence, only the music so tastefully soft. the floors were pure white marble. even the mannequins were somehow less ludicrous, almost had dignity. i was struck by how few customers were around. there was an odor; it was delicate and i looked at my dad who was looking at me. “it smells in here, what is that?” he smiled wryly. “it’s the smell of money.” without thinking i opened my mouth as if i could taste the wealth, let it settle on my tongue like snowflakes. i picked up a fuzzy toque idly. it was so soft it nearly slipped from my fingers. cashmere, $60. i laughed—at the hat, at myself, at everything. in a nearby glass case was–i couldn’t believe my eyes!--an eel skin wallet, smooth not shiny, and i wanted to touch it but, what’s the point, if a toque is $60 no way could i afford this wallet and is it creepy, this pull to eel skin? i wondered if i could and did buy it for you, would you unwrap it and think i’m strange? i think i’m strange sometimes, so what does it matter? we finally found a wallet in macy’s, buried amongst all the belts and cufflinks. brown leather, soft, trifold. now its corners are softened and it’s filled with evidence of you. 220112 ... raze it was a christmas gift almost twenty-five years ago. the leather had this swirl that gave it the illusion of being lined with dark blood vessels. it was red once. time has found a way to make it brown. there are still things inside of it. not money. relics. in the back bill pocket there's a bank receipt so faded i can't make out anything but the date. and even that's a guess. in the card slots there are christmas pictures from half a lifetime ago. fake smiles and dress shirts and hairspray. twice i wet my messy winter hair at the bathroom sink, ran a comb through it, and found second generation shine and hold i didn't know i could count on. there are business cards for music stores and video rental places that don't exist anymore. there's a post-it note with my mother's cell phone number written on it in my handwriting. there's a two-sided "big ten" card from cd plus. every time you bought ten albums from them, you got one free. they didn't have the greatest selection, but every once in a while i found something good, like the first few morphine albums and the second peter_gabriel album. there's a business card from freeds with a description of the coat i still wear today written on the back. there's a rejected passport photo taken the year i turned seventeen. hair touching my shoulders. green sweatshirt made darker by the monochromatic image. there are three high_school student cards. and there's a bell calling card i used to call my dad from a payphone when i was stuck at a trailer park with the people who stole all the money the wallet held for a few hours the day it was given to me. 220115 ... tender_square it was this tri-folded, hideously bright wallet i bought from zellers. it had neon orange fabric overlayed with hot pink latticed plastic so the orange showed underneath, so far from complimentary on the color wheel it gave you a headache if you stared too long. after a while, i decided it wasn’t edgy enough for my tastes, and i took a sharpie to the plastic, used the squares to count out the spaces to make letters, and wrote out lyrics from the sounds that i once longed to have tattooed on me when i turned eighteen, “i gave my ♥ to rock n’ roll.” 220115 what's it to you? who go blather from