Campfire

This one is from the vaults. Originally posted February 2018 on www.abidecollective.org

We’re all a lot skinnier in the above picture, that’s for sure. You can also see the varying effects of thirty-five years of life; wrinkles, gray hair, the sloop of the shoulders. But there’s so much you can’t see. You can’t see the careers, the romances, the children, the successes and the vacations. You also can’t see the bankruptcies, the hours sitting by a dying parents bedside, the fights to save the marriages, the calls to bail a kid out of jail, the questions and doubts and gambles that didn’t pay off.

​You have to be present around the campfire to see all that.

These South Texas nights, horizons lit with a soft glow from nearby oil rig flares and ‘yotes yipping and cavorting like a circus of drunk frat boys. The night forms a familiar