How kind for you to look in on me. Yes, I snapped awake —
a behavior borne of fateful days and the mind’s midnight murmurs.

But I am okay.

Things are uncertain here, along the courses of this murky earth, as the sun’s unfaithful light will shine on other places. The paths of all our lives are unraveled, as stirred to near-disorder as the roads I barely see beyond my window, curved and folded around the varied, dim hills where all my neighbors sleep.

But you know that by now, Observer, I am sure.

As old as you are, I know you’ve learned to cherish the charted arc of your predictable light.