10/10/2025
Windwalker’s Birthday
There was always dust in the morning light
the kind that caught fire when the sun slipped
through the cracked glass of Windwalker.
We called it sacred then,
though neither of us prayed much anymore.
You’d already lived a dozen lives
by the time I showed up
Sailor, lover, thief of time,
a man rebuilding a brick sanctuary
out of the rubble of his own heartbreak.
You would tell everyone that the first year
of hammering plaster off those old walls
was your therapy.
I believed you
every strike a confession.
We drank coffee thick as river silt,
talked art like it was oxygen,
played pool beneath the crumbling tiles
and cracked tin ceiling
while old delta blues made ghosts dance.
You called me “the package man” once
said I was the “whole damn deal”
but it was you who taught me
what a life built from ruins looks like.
You’d scale ladders and beams and balance
in the thin air of that old gallery,
sure footed as wind itself.
while I held my breath below
half certain you’d fall
half certain you never could.
And you’d just grin,
weightless in the dust and light.
And when the nights got heavy,
we’d light a bowl and talk about the war.
You’d circle the same memories again and again
like waves wearing down a stone
Your voice sometimes catching,
sometimes steady,
but always reaching for something
only silence and presence could answer.
We dreamed of drifting the Mississippi,
chasing jukes and catfish,
but the river never came for us.
Instead, the current was time,
and it carried you off
before we could fix what cracked between us.
I’ve had to face my own wreckage since then
the kind that makes you say things
you don’t mean
and build walls you can’t climb back over.
We were mirrors, you and I
two men haunted by different wars,
trying to build peace out of brick and music.
I know now how fear can twist love
into something unrecognizable,
how pride can dress itself as protection,
and how easy it is to lose your way
when you’re just trying to survive.
You weren’t the only one who ran.
I’ve lashed out too
said things I can’t take back,
hurt people I wanted to hold.
I wish I’d forgiven you sooner,
sat beside you in those last days,
let silence be the truce
we never managed to find.
But I was left in the dark,
and maybe you were too.
Still, I think you knew
in that quiet, stubborn heart of yours
that I understood.
Every mural, every song,
every young artist who found a home
Within those towering bricks…
they’re pieces of you still alive in this world.
You were no saint,
but saints don’t climb twenty feet up a wall
just to change a lightbulb,
laughing the whole way down.
I still hear you in the wood grain,
still smell the sawdust and smoke,
still see you in the eyes of every misfit
we gave a place to.
Windwalker wasn’t just a building.
It was a heartbeat made of brick and grit,
and you were the one who started it.
Happy birthday, Richard.
I hope wherever you are
the windows are fixed,
the coffee’s hot,
the blues are playing soft enough
for the ghosts to dance.
and there’s a table waiting
for one more game of pool.
