Hello. Friend.
Dare I say friend?

I will say, if you’re here, you’re looking for something.
A story. A piece of yourself. Maybe a memory.
Maybe a reason to linger.

Or maybe I just told you to read this. Like some self-absorbed ass.
All because I wanted you to glimpse a side I hardly let slip out in the open.

Maybe you think you know me—pieced together a version that fits.
Something neat. Something easy to hold.

Maybe that’s all you have.
It’s all I gave you.
The version that’s light enough to carry. Omitted of all the visceral truth.

Or maybe you don’t give a damn.
You don’t.
You never did.
And you never will.
Maybe I shouldn’t either.

But here’s the thing—

I do.

About this.
The weight of every moment that lingers.
The echoes of nights that should have gone differently.
The ghosts that never learned to leave.

Because this?

This isn’t just some story.
It’s a reckoning.
A ledger of moments too sharp to fade.

The weight of every inhale I never noticed.
A map of who I was,
scrawled in ink and cigarette burns,
leading straight to who I’ve become.

This is what I write. Sweat and fire. Fists against walls.

This is juniper and asphalt.
Cigarettes on rooftops.
Headlights cutting through fog.

Rooms filled with too many bodies, too much noise—
then silence, stretching out like something alive.

This is every scar that stayed long after the wound closed.
Every name that still tastes bitter on my tongue.
Every night I swore I wouldn’t look back.
Then caught my own reflection in a window
and wondered if I ever really left.

I’ve tried.
Oh, I fucking tried.

Bend?
Dust in my teeth.
Summers that burned the air from my lungs.
Winters that stole it back.
I learned what silence feels like there.
Not the kind you choose.
The kind that swallows screams.
Graves of dreams. Always was.

People still move back there.
Wandering.
Looking.
For what?
No idea. Maybe lost childhoods.

Portland?
A cigarette flicked into puddles.
Neon bleeding into rain-slick asphalt.
Bridges and bars. Rebellion in black and white.
Punk rock concerts and hippie festivals.
Back alleys and penthouse suites.
Whispers of love and graffiti.

I never lived there,
but I remember it like I did.
I left something behind.
Maybe a name.
Maybe a broken nose or two.
Maybe a heart.
Maybe nothing.
Maybe more.

But if you look closely,
you can see the scars.

Not the kind left by time.
The kind left by people
trying to outrun themselves.
Or yesterday.
Maybe their mixtapes.

Here in Minneapolis, the rain doesn’t whisper. It pounds.
It turns asphalt into a black mirror. Forcing redemption.
Summer rushes up to tease and flashes back again to the bracing cold.
But for now, here is where I press my hands to the wood.

The bench at 11:11th & Black is solid.
Unmoving.
For now.

So, welcome, again.
But this isn’t just about a bench.
This isn’t just about me.
This isn’t just about what I think I know.

It’s. About. Everything.
The ghosts who shaped me.
Those that left their fingerprints on my life
and never looked back.

Maybe my ghosts sleep easy.
Maybe they’ve settled into the quiet spaces
between then and now,
resting just enough to let me pretend they’re gone.

Or maybe not. At. All.

Maybe, somewhere in the back of their minds,
I flicker in and out like bad reception. A memory they think they’ve misplaced.

But no—
I’m still there.

Wedged in tight. Right where they left me.
Like a cigarette burn on their perfect interior.
In a cozy shoebox full of pictures
they forgot about in the back of their skulls.

Maybe one night, they’ll Google my name, and this is what they’ll find.
Maybe it’ll mean something new. Something old.
Something.
Because the past doesn’t live in places.

It lives in people.
It dreams in time,
and we can conjure it whenever we feel like it.

At least, I do.
I do it, headfirst.

I still wonder if they ever drive past an empty lot
and feel it.

If a certain song comes on and suddenly,
their chest gets tight.

If they ever taste something familiar,
something bitter and electric,
and they don’t know why—

I do.

This life has been written in punk songs and bloody knuckles.
Dive bar scenes.
Backyard parties that got too loud, too reckless.
Moments of clarity in the face of the supernatural.
Redemption with bloodied knees at the altar.

It’s been of serendipity. Lost causes and victories in the face of a horde.

It’s in the moments where you felt like every second was a movie.
But they aren’t just memories. They aren’t just movies.

They’re hauntings.
With pissed-off poltergeists that still play their music on repeat,
daring us to make sense of them now.
To come to a reconciliation with our now and then.

Lingering echoes of old laughter in abandoned rooms.
The phantom weight of a hand on my shoulder.
The scent of cigarette smoke that isn’t really there.
You think you remember things the way they happened?
No. You remember the way they felt.

A shadow in the periphery. A voice almost recognized in a crowded room.
You ever wake up in a city you don’t remember leaving?
Ever drive past a place and feel it more than you see it?
Don’t lie. You’ve got ghosts too.
Close your eyes. Go on—do it. What’s the first place that comes back to you?

I am here, now.
Or maybe I never really left.

But, you’re here.
I’ll take it.

This is my bench. My mind’s center.
On the sacred crossroads of 11:11th & Black Blvd.

Where the Ghosts don’t just whisper—they rewrite the story.
They make you doubt what you saw, what you did, who you were..
Where the mirror never shuts the fuck up when you catch your reflection.
Where I carve my stories faster than my knife dulls across the woodgrain of my core.
Where I face the ghosts and remember with purpose.

Maybe you think you know me. Maybe you think you know yourself. But memories lie, don’t they? Twist, sharpen, blur. You see what you need to. You carry what you can. Omit the visceral truth.

So take what you want.
Leave the rest.
Or sit with it.
Let it burn.
You can hate it if you want.

I’ll still be here.

In dust and ink,
                         Gregory Scott