today marks 5 years since my friend Claire was disappeared from earth. I say “disappeared” because I’m still learning how to talk about her death and it’s only recently that I’m able to do it without shaking so bad I have to stop. “Disappeared” is also misleading because it implies that I don’t see peeks and snatches of her in weird places (a toy alien? a vocal inflection? a patterned dress?) and I do, she’s all over the place and yet here I am talking about her in the present tense even though she was dis-allowed from present tense. I still feel so angry that I’m rambling about it on this app instead of scrolling through videos of her making weird faces from 5 minutes ago, not 5 years ago.

I’ve had the opportunity this year to make art in memory of Claire through a residency with @claires_continuum (and with generous, gentle nudging from @resonantmotion). I’ve been preoccupied with making something “good.” I’ve been procrastinating, or putting off the feelings I know I’ll have to slip into if I sit too still. I finally went for a walk and asked her/a gray sky from under a tree: If I wrote a song for you, what would you want it to sound like? I light candles, I clench my jaw, I wait. I made this sort of deranged sculpture full of prisms and films and things that catch and color light, and I hung it up on my house today. For the last 5 years I’ve kept 2 slides on my windowsill, with a sort of ironic half-hope that she’ll see them as a door and come through to visit. I guess I made a giant version of that? I don’t know. I’m still angry. And I’m grateful that I get to wake up every day and see the seeds she planted in me grow into freaky beautiful vibrant things.