It was long after those halcyon nights with our Cliff House friends drinking pitcher after pitcher of beer at The Goal Post Tavern, punching quarters into the Juke Box to listen to another round of Honky Tonk Women or Jumpin’ Jack Flash.  It was after we’d opened our little record store, and closed it just two years later, flat broke, making an ignominious exit in the bone chilling depth of icy winter.  Exiled.
Long after the apartment with silverfish, cleaning the spoiled milk of others on hands and knees, selling leisure suits to henpecked husbands.  Well after our rebirth of wonder; lifted by a Jewish family business, our intrinsic and earned worth recognized, rewarded.  Back on both feet.  Long after the first house, a master’s degree, a solid career, a new house, Apple computers, a beagle, roses; long after it seemed I had the world in the palm of my hand, it vanished, disintegrated.  Mother died,  husband lost his mind; total eclipse – for years – but not forever.

ghost of a chance