12 days of heather, day 8

i wrote this series remembering my best friend who was making pastries at windows on the world when she was senselessly killed by strangers with hate in their hearts. it’s been 18 years since i’ve seen her face, put my arms around her, eaten a meal she’s made. i wrote this to feel connected to her. i share it so that you might too.

day eight
heather had a way with food. but she also had a way with words. she was articulate and funny and the girl could write. once, in high school, she was frantically scribbling out an entire english paper for bill messer--one of the toughest graders around--literally, right before class. as the bell rang, she was putting the finishing touches on it. days later, she got it back emblazoned with a beautiful red A.

with her friends, heather engaged in all kinds of word play that we eventually codified. there was "word shortening" where "ridiculous" became "ridic." there was "word synthesis," where several words melded into one. after marc, heather and i had passed a long weekend rife with shenanigans, those days became known as "maleather weekend," the three of our names knitted together.

she also loved to devise hilarious names and labels for things. in this picture, i reverently hold the "turkish love candle" which we would light every time we got together. i'm sure all of those who spent time with her in high school and college have words or phrases to contribute to this lexicon. there were many.

in junior high, heather wrote a 49-page book of poetry for a class project. not surprisingly, many of her poems were about food or used food imagery. my favorite one is this haiku: fresh manapua/chewy bun with char siu bits/oops, ate some paper. it's funny, it's real, and it has that delightful, relatable surprise ending. i mean, who hasn’t accidentally chewed up a bit of that waxy square of paper perennially stuck to the bottom of a classic manapua?

in the preface to this book, heather wrote, "a poem to me is words that paint a picture rich in detail and feeling." when i read that now, the only thing i can think is that by her own definition, her entire life was poetry.