I can feel the future behind meand see the past in front of me like a sky-blue pyramid.What were you expecting to find after being isolated for so long?An underworld of people turned into screens turned into shadows;their anonymous faces like symbols in a shuffled Tarot deck.The scaffolding citywith its trees and branches converted into a dull wet grid.Did you think the world you knew before had vanished?Maybe just flattened out.But there isn’t a cold war happening here.Libraries aren’t choking on flaring waves.Ballrooms aren’t ballooning with moons of ash.They say the houses and buildings hereare slowly being painted gentrification gray:urn: cemetery: cinder cone: color field of warheads.We’re enjoying gold-speckled chocolate fudge cake and Earl Grey tea.Outside a neighbor’s son is blowing soap bubbles in the rain.I taste your fogcatcher skin like in a dream.It’s my birthday so you indulge my dogwired brain.Before I leave your place,you give me a copy of a Spanish mystery noveland three orange tomatoes that look like tiny pumpkins in my palm.I think of the purple Victorian house I saw on my wayfloating up the hill and the Santana family muralthat greeted me after exiting the BART station.Maybe I felt like I was already dead:ghostcandled: drained of vertical language:a gray star skinned of its light.