Thank you for being open to another more workable draft of me. It affected me profoundly. - Mary-Louise Parker

We know there exists a planet with four thousand different versions of songbirds. Because that is possible and because on that same planet can exist sentient beings made up almost entirely of stardust, and because bonafide poetry erupts mightily from some of those beings, and there is music, sex, and babies that laugh in their sleep; because we are roaming a universe that may be a hologram, with another dimension consecutively projecting itself outside this construct of reality and gravity; because of all that, there is no reason why my prayers shouldn't be able to reach your mother whose name I don't even know.

I don’t believe in endings, happy or sad, so my relationships with you continue to this day. They are the kind of relationships you have with a pair of skis you know you’ll never have to strap to yourself again. Maybe you never really liked skiing, but enjoyed being a person who could say, “Looks like I’ll be hitting the slopes this weekend!” So you kept on even though it cost too much to get down a hill. Gave you windburn. I see nothing weird about keeping those skis in the basement. They offer a little nostalgia for crappier times. More importantly, they serve as a reminder that I no longer have to ski.

It’s because of you that I can go to any church and take whatever the service has to offer, all of it up for interpretation except kindness.