When I am out there, in time, I am inverted, changed into a desperate version of myself. I become a thief, a vagrant, an animal who runs and hides. I startle old women and amaze children. I am a trick, an illusion of the highest order, so incredible that I am actually true.

I raise my head and see a red illuminated EXIT sign and as my eyes adjust I see tigers, cavemen with long spears, cavewomen wearing strategically modest skins, wolfish dogs. My heart is racing and for a liquor-addled moment I think Holy shit, I've gone all the way back to the Stone Age until I realize that EXIT signs tend to congregate in the twentieth century.

It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing.

To world enough and time.

Now I wonder if it means that the future is a place, or like a place, that I could go to; that is go to in some way other
than just getting older.

It's hard being left behind. (...) It's hard to be the one who stays.