When We Still Walked Together

There was a time before the smoke learned our names. Cities fell behind us without asking to be forgiven. We carried nothing but each other. One small hand. One forgotten bear. Enough to keep tomorrow from disappearing. Even now, when I remember the first road, I do not remember the ruins. I remember that we walked together. The light did not ask who deserved tomorrow. It simply found two children walking toward it. When We Still Walked Together follows two children crossing a landscape marked by loss, their joined hands forming the quiet center of the painting. Ruins recede into shadow while light gathers before them, suggesting that hope is not the absence of devastation, but the courage to continue in relationship. The work reflects on memory, innocence, and the fragile inheritance carried from one generation to the next. It sits inside of a mythopoetic narrative arc still under construction called The Jerusalem Fumes Trilogy, The Gateway Series, and The Silikind Wars