In the long nights now, the longer nights then, wondering, with you: Where were you? And you said, free (ah, that forever reflection; that trap in your mind feeding). And I said, show me, take me down to that downtown, the broken bricks and cracked mortar one, the fading graffiti one, where it’s always written, almost survivors, and where Jimmy Dean dreams were never really dreams and only ever the one-by-one falling of packaged 60s slogans like some Joan Didion nightmare—you re-pointed with words; this sanctity, searching for that place beyond your mind feeding, a name drifting onto a piece of paper, a song replaying, in the long nights now, the longer nights then, wondering, with you: Where were you? And you said, that place, you know the one where I sometimes live, so unknowing of myself, a place of aisles and midnight drives, third floors and flippin off cameras, little Buddhas, non-messages, parks by the water, Florida, Jean Coutu, Le Nouvel Hotel, and too, the ringing in of a New Year: “Ring Out, Wild Bells!” and from there, where? Well, tomorrow, of course, against that day's chaos, cold or otherwise. And what of lost together in that place that is the enactment of our words; words you know; words in constant need of being found again, in the long nights now, the longer nights then, wondering, with you: Where were you? Lost to a courage never found? Tucked into a trick of light that was never anything more than a darkness bound up in the finest silk and kept under a bed and called something else? And what of all the undisturbed moments? What of those? Where do they live? The quiet ones. The by the lake ones. The reading. The writing. The looking. The wanting. The love. Show me, and hold them, and keep them for me, in the long nights now, the longer nights then, wondering, without you: Where were you?​

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