We are starting to sit on porches, sharing the air of dying day with neighbors we never talk to. Sliding around in our separate routines and reading material, our caddycorner porches. A traveling man plays the guitar, the breeze is kicking down the street. This year’s summertime.

Gina, over time I have solidified the weird little promise made with the self. If I am safe, then remember a time of not being safe—never forget how it felt to be so far away, so buried, so believing in what cannot be changed(of the heartless, or ingrained—both we know are mingled like brother muscle fibers). The past matters, if only by the way I touch my hand to something now—thorough, definite, as present as present can be. The past matters, if only by the way an unspoken tolerance has developed, strained against its grips. Now I know: I have a right to say what bothered me. I have a right to both attack and defend all that ever happened.

I guess there are a few threads sagging but still attached—me to the city behind me. The home of ultimate pivot—the place of late night lonelies, the place of whiskey stink. The place of abandoned kitchen ware and mythical vortex. When this became that—or better said: when that became what traveled to this; I left the place stunned, a hand back to the mouth. I wanted to save something so badly, and I had malnutritioned weaponry.

But oh beautiful survival. How rare in daylight you are noticed, how little we know about you. I understand why some people love the word hope; I understand that even a bent up shred of it can turn the world again. We are on this moment because of the ones previous, stacked haphazard to get here. Apart is just an abstract form of togetherness—eye for elbow, hand for knee.