Mark Sandman. Cambridge, Mass.

A mystery belted in a trench coat (even though no rain was forecast), looking perpetually 1/4-asleep and perennially handsome, he tossed his pack of cigarettes (*slap*) on the well-worn spot on the bar top, cigarette lit, resting in his long, smooth fingers. He turned, nodding hello, & tilted his head up & to side, softly half-smiling like he did. The sultry beat of his 2-string slide bass & soothing seduction of a baritone sax, childhood tragedies, and international streetlamps of unusual alleyways, reclined in the corners of his lips, with tales yet to be told. Exhaling day-old stale perfume, his stories expired with his breath as he evaporated with the smoke & floated away, on his last ferry ride to a different sort of shore & a different sort of day. x

I saw him at Bread & Circus a couple days before he left for that European tour. After I'd checked out , making my way out the door, I glanced down an aisle. He was in that same trench coat on a late June day, his fluid frame, like existential ripples edging across Walden, gently bent contemplating nut options on the shelving. In a rush to get somewhere (occupied in my mind, from what I recall, with boyfriend troubles. stupid child.), I didn't cross the floor to say hello; but I did hesitate, foot mid-air. in that suspended moment, I had an inexplicable overwhelming urge to tell him what his music & writing meant to me. To share the love that resounded in the soul of my cells. Not that he didn't already know, mind... but why did I feel so powerfully to give it a voice and on that particular day? I didn't go back. & for whatever reason I was kicking myself the rest of the day, and subsequent days, that I hadn't. My sister told me I could tell him when he came home. But it was like on some level I knew...

that that aisle in the grocery would be the last time I laid eyes on him. And 5 days later was the last time anyone else would.

 "...I hope you're waiting for me across your carpet of stars..."