Knock so I’ll know you’re still there, half listening, interpreting the air. Full of failing foreign tongue, my dialect of stammer come undone. I’ve got these threads of you and I that I use to tie my doubts down, and from four times-zones away, still yesterday, still talking to the past: from the front seat of your car, gravel road and falling, falling hands and falling star.

Start the engine up. I’d like a new identity. A pseudonym. Some plastic surgery. Or just a way to disappear. Someone to write me out of here. I hear you hum an unfamiliar song. Thought maybe you would come along. Perhaps you’d like to see some piece of this; my new philosophy is that a crappy tape deck somewhere plays a greatest hits collection of strange and tender moments, lost, stranded, and forgotten. I’ll meet you there. (Something I forgot to say: can’t find a way to make this mark more clear. So crack your skull before you weep, and I’ll try to keep some part of me sincere.)