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You stagger down the rows of buildings blinking cold in the half light. Life is but a colored reflection in a distant mirror cracked and frayed at the edges. Streetlights reel. What's out here on a Tuesday evening to be found? Time or no time, the abnegation of time. Time's a black machine spinning nowhere and you're stuck between spokes, falling empty in a rush of feathered silence.

Your liver hurts. You drop yourself on a stoop and reach for a cigarette, ignoring the slight tremor. Glassy-eyed, you take quick drags but hold the smoke back feeling heat feeling searing that never reaches a white peak. Snow behind your eyes, swimming in a clear fog that undulates like molten glass without the color.

They pass by on all sides and you don't look at them.

You turned your phone off because you don't want to be found. You can touch your ragged breath. The trains underneath quiver and shock your planted feet. You think about following them, chasing the fleeting red light into a maze of rusted pipe and concrete covered in orange and blue – Fick die Amerikaner, G. ist eine Hure, Ich bin der einzelne König... The last king of nowhere riding glass and scattered pebbles into something at the heart of it all. Speed moving in slow circles, recursive time.

Your cigarette's out and you pull yourself to the trees overhead. It's late spring and the air is still warm. You think about the things that have passed you by and take another drink from your pocket, a second of warmth dissolving in the mist. The voices come and go in clouds against the wind. Now it's hazy dark and everyone else is laughing and you're out of bitterness.

The city's on fire and there's no smoke but you're trapped. A slow burning withering up through your ankles and calcifying in your gut. You lean against the trunk and listen to the sap and the sway of the leaves. You smell like shit and haven't shaved. Another cigarette's an eye in cold flesh, an orange prophet crying words you can't hear and wouldn't want to. The man on the corner wants your change.

Soon you'll have to limp home wherever that is tonight. Take a train and hold a hood over your eyes but you're not Tiresias and you can see everything. The light hurts. Ren can wait another night. This was important, to see... to see... He's not important tonight. You don't want to think about it. You're full of cotton and parts of you are ripping away to the hurtling dark. There will be stairs to climb and water to drink and maybe it'll be okay. Smoke a little to take the edge off, it'll be fine.

Everything will be fine.