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What’s the use of going to soon, of baring teeth, brandishing weapons? The real battles are born of boredom. Little to agree on, sad at the core. All the stuffed cotton silence, the blind piano players. The small mouthed, the angry, the dirt-caked. Every dire prediction predicted by small cracks in the foundation that flood waters rose up through staining the carpet, toppling chairs. Scrambling for attics on rickety ladders. Naming things all over again, tired of the tempo of these old-fashioned syllables. Unrequited absences, a new poetry of braille, birds eating bread crumbs while we follow them home. Curfews on collect calls, disappearing payphones. An ocean that answers for free. A russian doll version of all your selves sitting on a shelf. We dusted ourselves off, cleaned all the relics of our premises, promises. Pulled apart the seams and sewed up new holes we inadvertently made when the needle stayed too long. Now it’s like a song, sung between sleeping and dreaming. An airplane writing phrases in the sky with smoke, that kind of loopy cursive, almost cloud, the only way I knew to ask the question. The only way I knew to hide the answer.