At some point we learned that, though we disagreed on why, we agreed the years had stopped meaning as much, or at least enough, so we employed an asterisk to prove to humans of future years, years with still perfect and impossible potential, something here in 2026* needed, needs fixed, a little mulligan, and the asterisks, they comforted, they gave vague nuance to everything we loved—Love, too, in semantic flux—but now, in 2036, years get stricken through, and no one talks of them because no one really talks, we learned that at some point, we just stopped.