my little brother, my shared face, my tugging twin always pulling half my heart til it's a split-open fruit shedding juice and falling to pieces. good old busch light boy with an ear for poetry. wrench the speeding golf cart ten minutes on gravel roads until we stand at the edge of the water, a secret beautiful place, side-by-side tasting the same dust in our mouths.

now that you're around and yourself i want you around always.

the whole neighborhood is drinking cold cans of mexican beer and listening to jessica lea mayfield with the windows open, everyone is ignoring laundry heaped in the basket, leaving on the too-tight shoes that leave red creases in their heels.

over three hours of driving for one meeting today, but i am good at long drives by now. zipped up my laptop bag and waved goodbye through the glass doors, texting summary notes to my boss. in thirty-five feet, your destination is on the right, a dusty turnaround on a frontage road, finally a front-row spot to park my gnat-spotted car. cashiers compliment my purple hair. i waited, hands clasped, under a blue door and an exit sign duct-taped to the wall. continue on this road for seventy miles. ate greek fries out of the paper sack with one hand, steered straight and steady with the other, sang along with the wind rushing in.

"It means I am not going away."

I pulled up my open Twitter tab last Thursday, returning to my desk after a meeting, and read a tweet about Roger Ebert’s death. Seconds later, I felt buoyed by hope that his Wikipedia page didn’t list a death date. And then, and then — retweeted over 9,000 times, the Sun-Times announcement, “with a heavy heart.” Arrived in my inbox on April 2, 2013: The #162 Ebert Club Newsletter. On April 6, 2013: Funeral services for Roger Ebert.

"It means I am not going away," Smile Politely, April 8, 2013

I wrote an essay on Roger Ebert and the internet for Smile Politely's In Memoriam issue today; was honored to.