I was allowed to lounge beneath the static sizzle for most of my forties: patient like a meal uneaten, dull to anxieties, promised to the gentle pull of entropy. I was seen or unseen by relations and colleagues and strangers, an occasional reassuring reminder of existence.
The throbbing didn't begin until the lichens had gained purchase, transforming flesh into vapor and light into flesh, transforming ambition into a gauzy sense of retreat upon its fresh exposure to the electrochemical background noise of the home neighborhood. Standing erect, the concrete was hot white foam and the fiction crackled like ribbons of ceramic.