Strange to be a few barstools down from you at O'Brien's. Yet, a decade away from you in time. Tim is handsome. I doubt that means anything coming from me, but I didn't exactly talk to him. Not much else I can say. You're still out of his league. Always dating down. Thank you.

When Tim went to the bathroom, I wanted to cut through the smoke and tell you I love you. Not in a gesture of romance. Not in an act of heartbreaking bravery. Really just to say it. I haven't said it to anyone in such a long time. I love you.

Before I saw you, I went to visit my sister at the hospital. Jessica switched to the night shift last week. She gets the pleasure of telling cranky old men no more Vicodin, and in act of mercy, God grants her a week of sunrises to be viewed from the wide windows of the 13th floor.

The nurse tending the desk told me Jess was making the rounds. I creeped into four or five dark rooms before I found her. Might've even woken a bald woman in an iron lung. Do they make iron lungs anymore? Looked like an iron lung.

Anyways, I found her in a room grabbing a meal tray and putting on its "kosher" lid to be trashed. "Hey, man. Henri, this is my brother Josh. Josh this is Henri," Jess introduced. I shook his hand.

He looked up at me through black, thick-framed glasses. Henri had one silvery capped tooth that became visible when he smiled. The smile crumpled and wrinkled his face like an old newspaper.

"If you want you can just stay in here," my sister said. "Henri's a cool guy and I need to go grab his sleeping medication."

I told her sure. Sat down next to Henri. He looked to be in his early sixties. Very lean. Sharp jaw. Large knuckles. If he ever stepped in a ring, I bet he made a hell of a fighter.

Henri removed his glasses. Placed them in his lap next to a collection of Chekov stories.  I told him I really liked Russian literature. No matter a person's class they always seem to have servants. A butler to tell them their molding slice of bread was ready, and a maid to serve it.

"I feel just as lucky. Your sister has treated me like I just walked in from Hollywood Boulevard." I asked him what he was in for -- like it was prison.

"Fractured hip. The most cliche of old-timer injuries. Not proud of it," he laughed softly. "I have been biking across the country and a little white sedan didn't take much notice of me -- well, until after they hit me."

****. I asked why he was making the journey. His wife died in the summer. His life stopped. "Life is measured in the stops," he told me. "When your job, your hobbies, sometimes even your friends all become irrelevant and time doesn't matter -- you've stopped. I locked myself in our house for a month. Told the kids I didn't want them to visit. I got the best woman on the planet. I don't feel guilty for taking her. Because believe me, I had to earn her," he looked to the side for a moment. Staring at the black television screen.

Then he told me that life may be measured in stops, but greatness is measured in starts. Journeys. I thought you'd like that, Ms. Anna. Henri then asked me that terrible question, "got a wife?" as if to make sure the conversation didn't center on him.

I told him I had gotten a divorce three years ago. He asked if I had moved on. I confessed, I've hobbled. His heavy brow grew heavier. His hands pulled the bed table to the middle. He asked me to hand him a pen off the dresser. He uncapped it. "What year were you born?" 1986.

"Okay, and you were divorced in 2009?" Yep. "And you haven't started over?" Nope. Henri wrote something on the napkin and pushed the bed table to me. With a shiver, a weight passed through me -- going upwards. The napkin read,

"Josh
1986-2009, 2012-"

"Don't waste three years of your life again."

I only went to the hospital because Jess has a friend she wanted to introduce me to. Her name is Macie, I think. Macie called in sick. I'll call it a fair trade. I've written too much again. I hope you read this late at night, and when you awake, I hope the coffee tastes new. Your newspaper isn't wet with rain. I hope your journey starts or restarts. You deserve the same unknown energy that seems to be coming from under the concrete.

I wish I could hold your hand again. I miss that.
I miss the way we spark, the way our energies dance together, like two clouds playing tag in the wind.
Do you remember how it feels?
Do you remember, at the stone circle, hand touching, bodies leaned in, and the rush we felt?
Do you remember me? The truth of me, impossibly in tune with the truth of you; impossible to name but forever ingrained.
Do you remember the feeling of finding something impossible to find, impossible to define, and just letting it be, not worrying about the label.
Do you remember what it feels like to hold my hand?
Do you remember what it felt like, hands together, the tremors we felt together? The impossibility that someone could know so well without knowing?
Do you remember...
I forgot... I forgot the feel of your hand in mine; how it felt to have you there at my side.
I forgot in sadness the peace we had.  
I forgot in anger what it meant to live the impossible.
I forgot, in the hurt, the joy of just being... of trusting...
I remember now... the hurt, the pain... it split me apart...
  In healing, I remember the peace...
   In healing, I remember the laughing, the smiles.... I remember... "hello laady!"
    In healing, I remember the power, the sparks...
     In healing, I remember... late night drives and wind mills never seen... just keep talking and never get bored...
I remember you... and I remember me... Our friendship that must always be... a bond stronger than we could be, alone...

Ella Fitz’s rendition of Dream a Little Dream for the umpteenth time.
Louie comes in tune with that righteous horn.
I drink more as I sing along, off key.

There could be an entire SECTION of books written about us.
How we fell into that great whirlwind.
How we learned to hate the world when we didn’t have each other.
How we re-kindled, for that brief, brief time.
How I thought maybe we could love again.

We had hours that turned to days that turned to months.
We were the perfect piece of short fiction
An art form so gloriously undervalued,
(by both the audience and the creators)
Until we found ourselves in the Middle
(the worst feeling in the world.
Because like purgatory or super glue:
you're stuck.)

We said goodbye.
And I found I had residual emptiness.
I became residual emptiness.

I loved again, but it wasn’t anything
Like the masterpiece we had.
I knew because
Every day with him felt real.
Every day with you
Was a dream.
Something rooted in intangibility
Something I was astonished to find
happening to me.

It happened again-
We found ourselves in the same place
At the same time.
And after just a few weeks,
You gave me the greatest gift:
The indignity of silence.
And you gave me it
For the most ignoble reason—
You’re afraid.

Honey bun,
We’re all afraid.

It made me think
That maybe  the story of you and I
can only have a happy ending
in a place where it’s not so scary.

So me, Louie and Ella all ask you,
That
In your dreams
Whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me.

[Because that's the only place you'll find me now.]

Sometimes a man can't say
What he . . . A wind comes
And his doors don't rattle. Rain
Comes and his hair is dry.

There's a lot to keep inside
And a lot to . . . Sometimes shame
Means we. . . Children are cruel,
He's six and his hands. . .

Even Hamlet kept passing
The king praying
And the king said,
"There was something. . . ."

Tuesday night and it’s Baked Beans AGAIN! Does she ever stop talking.
I used to fool myself that her snore was musical like a sweet sounding flute,
Now it’s just a snore. Too loud, all too familiar.
What would happen I wonder if I took that tin of Baked Beans on the table
And battered her to death with it.

They found the ****** weapon in the cupboard on the top shelf,
Next to a quivering can of rice pudding.
It didn’t look overly angry or guilty, it looked (for what it’s worth)
Like any other tin of beans.
However it had blood and hair around the rim.

“BAKED BEANS ****” the front page of The Sun would say,
Amnesty on all tinned goods called for, as the masses
Started taking ‘tin(g)s” into their own hands.
All over the country, partners dying at the hands of Heinz,
Or possibly cans of spam or pear slices.

The Army may catch on, a major new part of SAS training,
Close quarter baked bean tactics.
The wail of sirens as Police arrive at an incident
“Put down the weapon or we shall be forced to fire… tinned pineapple”.
A can of alphabetti spaghetti could spell death.

“Let’s not have Baked Beans tonight my love… Chinese?”

I am the emptiness that exists in the kitchen
at such hours, late and lonely.
I can operate only in this space,
at night when the answers become irrelevant
and the present tense becomes the past.
I rely on the sporadic sounds of movement of traffic below the window.

I am the scratchy sound of death cab
on the Buick’s aged speakers.
I claw at the insides of the aluminum
and seep out through cracked windows.
I shore myself against a distant past
despite better judgment.

I am born of the vivid summer heat.
I ride the train to the loop
and back out to the city’s extremities,
like blood through a body.
I sweat under layers of wool humidity.

I am the concrete paving the boundless suburban streets.  
I exhale tar and forest
as the rain begins to fall, long after dark,
cooling the still-hot surface.
I crave the tires and feet that brace themselves against me.  

I am the slow moving clouds at dusk, the color of tea.
I ignite as the sun slouches toward the horizon.
I consume the jets that depart from O’ Hare in every direction.

I am familiar laughter, striking ears in palpable waves.
I move most freely though vicious August heat,
But even in such passive chilled air, I proceed.

I careen toward what has been named peace,
though it’s been forgotten over the years.
I have fled the immortal city for one more ageless.
I crave the smell of the death of summer.

I pass into a state of suspension
like the bodies that surround me, never born but built.
I trace the veins and find no flesh,
but only bones beneath them.
I stretch willing to bridge the gaps that exist.

I am the tangled freeways moving among one another
in the heart of a city accused of being heartless.  
I am guiltless in the face of isolation.
I hold blood hostage on a daily basis.  

I am lethargic, gold-soaked afternoons
Bearing such spacious skies.
I lie beneath gilded light
like the lazy palm lined streets.
I am the trembling airwaves,
And I disarm the distance itself.