I misread wordbook as worldbook. I hated my computer and I wouldn’t stop staring at it. Infinity was in there somewhere, a beehive hidden deep in the trunk of an ancient tree in its sunlit grove: undeniable, humming. My head felt like someone’s head with a headache. How old was I? Was this life, this distracted time lapse from headache to headache? The cats sat in the window like cats, or they chased each other around the house, adorable. The neighbors had children or they were children. Attention might be love, but it’s also a form of currency. In a minute I’d be a person, a voice saying hello.

Nevertheless I left the windows open so the air could grow diagonal and soft. Everything beginning to appear both impossible and inevitable: the changing season, the use of language, the invisible god called time. My life a lightbulb the wrong size for the lamp meant to hold it. It’s outrageous to say anything’s like anything else, and yet we’re all more like one another than not, mostly water and carbon. Everything else is detail, which is meaningless or all that matters, depending on the distance from which you look.