On the clock it’s still early, but tarry skies say it’s never been this late—5:15 and the tarmac’s pitch dark, every bird abed and dormant. Yesterday I was twenty years younger, my future nationed by novels and travel and lovers of open and reckless want, but tonight I am ancient and sore. I have forgotten how to read; my brain’s a ball of fraying twine. Anyone’s touch would unspool me. Outside, the city sprints on. Sirens and streetcars insist today’s the same as every yesterday, though we all collect the differences, like rocks or rosary beads, to remind us of the way things were. I brew a pot of tea. I bake a loaf of bread. I stew carrots into mush and wait before pen and page. My chair shrieks beneath me; my skull is granite in my hands. I’d take lessons in pausing, if pausing weren’t just a word. Why are all the good days a soaring forgetfulness, and all the bad a flat final splat across the concrete of what’s always been true?