Happy Birthday June Lee

I’m writing to my mother, b: 1918 d: 1999, though there's almost no record now of you being born or of your death. There aren’t many pictures of you left to me, and when I look on the internet or social media for your name or for your image there’s only a thin black line crossing out your name, either as if you no longer existed or that your name June Lee Roddan might have been misspelled and placed in a different folder or outbox.

I love you, mom, though you don’t know I love you now. Or do you? If I had roses I’d bring them to you today and ring the doorbell so you’d answer. Je est une autre.

At one point, Rimbaud wrote from Aden, Yemen to his mother in Charleville, France that he’d like a small camera sent to him, 1890 or therabouts, so that he could photograph the people and the wildlife in Africa. I’d like to send the same camera Rimbaud’s mother sent to him in Africa to you, mom, in Palm Desert, California, or wherever you are, so that I would know where you are now, knowing you liked to take pictures of what you were seeing.