Thirteen days past Reno I finally read the note: you’re always going to miss me was all that she had wrote.

She left a quiet voicemail while I was living in Saint Paul. Her voice was full of sadness and I didn’t return her call.

I never read the letters she mailed me from Fort Wayne, not even when she signed them with only her maiden name.

The Tulsa skies are lovely, or so I’m often told. I never stopped to notice when I was growing old.

The last I ever saw her, at a wake in Sante Fe, we shared a wistful smile and went our silent ways.