through the propped open space between the wall and the window, there is day. there is the blue light of oakland, the rising up of things, the lines that outline the sky and the shapes within it. i have been absent from here, in the desert, with the red rocks. running up mountains and floating with the heat of the sun, filling myself up with it, letting it imprint me with its little fingers so that now, days later, there are layers of my lifting. i am not packing up the life that i ought, i am not making way for things i should be, i am not filling boxes or files or cases, i am not breaking things down to there smallest common denomination. rolled or folded, we will end up together again. in tune with this tuneless piano i do what i can do and that is pick something up, walk with it out the door, dance with its hands in mine. and when we are done, all i can do is throw it to the opacity of this, over barbed wire, to the unended puddle drowned out in concrete, to the stains of paint and reiteration across the way. i have been absent from here and myself, finding some way to come back to the things i have left, finding some way to leave more of them. i have been speaking outloud in this silent language, in the buzz it makes on my tongue, in the cloud shapes that form a hollow. i am coming to conclusions but they are not at the end of things. and i remember that in joshua tree, far from here, there are shadows of light on the faces of rock, there are circles on the horizon that form the shape of palm springs, los angeles. i remember the way the stars look at night. i remember the hotness of day. and i tuck those things down in the pocket of me, i hold them on my palm, i close my eyes, and i walk outside.