10 years have passed.

It was soon after the new year when I got the call again. I'd lost count of how many times it had come before, but it almost always came from my aunt. She knew this and so she would begin all her other calls with the reassurance, “Your dad’s alright.”

This was the last time I got the call though, the details of which have long since drifted far away.

What I do remember is listening to my dad’s labored breathing for the next few nights, watching as he lay unconscious in a cold, cinderblock nursing home. I remember waiting bedside as the final embers of my father burned completely out.

Every night since, his memory has grown fainter, spreading further into the dark. It’s become more difficult to make him out against this field of stars, the light of which began burning before we were born.

And while I've always known it wouldn't be easy letting go, it’s been even harder holding on to this fistful of smoke.

SMOKE is the twelfth WAVE of SOULED. It's opening was announced during the final days of 2024 in a local NPR interview on December 23 and the Art Throb podcast with Kate Savage on Christmas Eve.

It incorporates ashes from WAVES 1 through 11 in a single coat of white ink.