when every last hair on my head stands up like a fire and fights and tells me that everything i've ever done in my life has gone wrong and the world feels like walking on rocks and my teeth ache and i think that standing in the shower naked under the cold streaming water might be the only reality that feels palitable and less lonely, i hold you tightly in my head. wrap your small burning figure running away from the horror and danger of the world and the power you found in your fingers through words to get you through. and i think, this life for me should be easy. not filled with fire bombs and flight. there is love around me. and there is light and wonder and words, always, waiting, to fill up the dust remains.

i don't call distant figures, anymore. hang up before the line might connect us throught the darkness and make me spill out the angry lost voices in my head. i know there is this, and that makes all the difference. the dog that i saw running down the street today, tongue hanging out, in danger of being struck by any passing car, my call from inside the closed windows, the tears i shed when i tried to believe you'd run back into the park to safety. it was you. i saw. and we are not. now. alone. anymore.