Off to the Big Easy!

I am destined to spend a week in the real Sin City - New Orleans. Three days of work, three days of play. This is my first vacation on my own, so please send me good luck and safety.

I think it'd be a gross simplification to say I have mixed feelings about going. Some say it's the wicked stepsister/evil twin of my beautiful, twisted hometown, Charleston. Some say it plays hostess to a very stylish cocktail party at the end of civilization. I know it's the last place one of my best friends lived. She committed suicide in New Orleans, while we were planning my first visit. I've still never been. Will I wrestle with her ghost or her madness when I'm there? I don't know. When she died I saw her face everywhere, but it's been years, and her features have faded into a haze, I can't pick them out in my mind anymore, much less in a crowd. The reality, the bone-rattling rawness of her death is gone, in it's place only a weight, as cold and immovable as iron.

For SR

The story you told with fluid hands and tumbling awkward pauses killed me long before you died.
When I taste vodka, I kiss your mouth.
I see only your white breast, scented with clove.
How could you have left me with those witless junkies?
Did you think their chatter would be my balm?
I reread your letters, realize you were only there to chronicle the sinking ship.