A conference in tacoma

I wrote it for Seattle, but it happened in Tacoma.

Out on the terrace it was a meeting of six minds that made my piece of it all whole.

On a Romanesque staircase next to an old city hall towering from halfway down the steps.

There with Melina, the roots spread an atmosphere that I could not hold out on much longer. The moment that I came here for. The moment cultivated by a collective of great ones so I could finally speak. The spark of David’s heartening enthusiasm gathered us around the table.

So I lit another cigarette, and let myself go.

Gabriel had just rocked the ballroom like Freddie. Humming the chords of my words alongside Stefan, they sustained the harmony of my oration as my breath waned.

At once, I was empowered and exhausted by the weight of it all and the anticipation of their critical voices. Chocolate lifted me up so high, I could fly out of the confines of any information loop sure to stand in my way again. My writings re-inspired in the circulation of these otherwise lost passages. A fleeting moment of collectivity, now a living memory I write to keep alive.

“Today we are seeing a reinvigorated struggle” over living memories like the one we had. New life breathed through this collective current to create a new one, to push that struggle forward, one step at a time.