Drawing on canvas

Signed on the front.

my sweet friend, my first girlfriend; so long and long and long ago now...
thirty years wearing at our fingers and suturing our choices.
the yearning gates, the exhalations of time. wrap us like crumbling swaddling.

I based this image on her. On the amazing OLDER WOMAN that I met when I was fifteen.
She used to pick me up in her car with beer and cigarettes.

The other kids at the bus stop were dying of baffled envy.

It was GREAT.

She was gentle. Kind. Brilliant.

I never understoood that she would be one of the best of women. Overwhelming love shaping her life like a flooding river. I didn't even... I didn't KNOW that she still wanted me... for eighteen years, she didn't TELL me.
Just watched.

Was my friend.

Held my hand.

Caught me when I stacked it.

TO MARINA:

Thanks babe.

Will always love you.