I can feel the future behind me and see the past in front of me like a sky-blue pyramid. What were you expecting to An underworld of people turned into screens turned into shadows; their anonymous faces like symbols in a shuffled Tarot deck. The scaffolding city with its trees and branches converted into a dull wet grid. Did you think the world you knew before had vanished? Maybe just flattened out. But there isn't a cold war happening here. Libraries aren't choking on flaring waves. Ballrooms aren't ballooning with moons of ash. They say the houses and buildings here are slowly being painted gentrification gray: urn: cemetery: cinder cone: color field of warheads. We're enjoying gold-speckled chocolate fudge cake and Earl Grey tea. Outside a neighbor's son is blowing soap bubbles in the rain. I taste your fogcatcher skin like in a dream. It's my birthday so you indulge my dogwired brain. Before I leave your place, you give me a copy of a Spanish mystery novel and three orange tomatoes that look like tiny pumpkins in my palm. I think of the purple Victorian house I saw on my way floating up the hill and the Santana family mural that greeted me after exiting the BART station. Maybe I felt like I was already dead: ghostcandled: drained of vertical language: a gray star skinned of its light.
