Woke with a little ache in my heart, I hate when that happens. Go away, little ache. It's after dawn, just. Grey skies for what seems like miles and fresh rain on the pavement. Cars make a slick sound as they go by on the street, there is a metronomic dripping from the eaves. Refrigerator hum. Conspicuous silence of the neighbor dog.

I almost called you yesterday, from Ohlone Park. Laying in the grass, reading Joyce, watching bees suck the pollen from those hardy white flowers that seem to flourish in parks and playing fields. There were babies in carriages or fumbling steps with their mothers and fathers, who could not help talking like their pre-speech children will talk: high pitched with truncated grammar; a gymnast practiced with headphones in, her legs making lovely angles above her head-- isn't that the way it makes more sense than the old colloquialism, heels over head rather than... it doesn't matter; two middle school boys in white yarmulkes tossed a football back and forth, laughing. Passion flower and honeysuckle spilled over the fence, small white honeysuckle blossoms turning yellow in the sun, clusters of young and old teeth. The sun does righteous work, fan and fade, burst and wither.

My hands are a bit cracked and have ink under the nails. I've been apprenticing at the press down the street, cleaning rollers and setting type. Richard makes us exquisite lunches, every second with David is a history lesson, their shop is an Ali Baba's cave of sparkling ephemera. The crossword puzzle is half done in the sun-- some Thursdays I have it, some I don't. It didn't seem wrong, to dial your number and ask how you were. I felt completely happy and with you, somehow, so I didn't. It was an afternoon where nothing was right and nothing was wrong.