I call.
He isn't home.
I whisper into his answering machine:

if ever
there will always be
because
there will always be
because

but
yes
and

fire

I don't identify myself. He'll know it's me playing wicked games with the recording of voices over miles away to decipher in a drunken stupor at two am or three am. Maybe he'll save me until the morning and listen to me again. See if he can make out any sense to it all. Mostly he'll probably just smile and hit delete and whisper curses back at me in the dark hallway that leads into the family room of his empty house. And I'll smile back from the picture he keeps hanging on the oatmeal colored fridge in the kitchen. But I'll be at least a decade younger and still living only a short walk away.