People here miss you, though, and everyone seems to think that I’m the best person to ask about how you’re doing, and I don’t really know. It’s been a while. Not too long, but long enough.

September 14 (later)

A month ago, someone you don’t talk to anymore told me about you. “If she decides that she doesn’t like you, there’s nothing you can do,” he said. “You’ll never see her again.”

I was torn. Because, like, yeah, I’ve seen you do that; but also I couldn’t help but think that the difference between you and me is that I was still talking to him. This kind of annoying, emotionally congested French lit major. I had been listening to him reminisce aimlessly for nearly an hour as we chained cigs on a bridge by the river, wondering if this was important. You don’t even live here anymore.

September 17

I think I used to feel like my life was tending toward some final, unavoidable confrontation. Now I have no ambitions, no plans, nothing that needs to be resolved right away. This is a good place for that feeling. I bet you can imagine what it’s like here for me. You would be impatient with all of it, probably. The same parties, the same conversations recur over and over. People tend to outgrow it. Elena’s been talking a lot about grad school.

The freight train tracks cross the street next to the Food Co-Op. From the side yard, where I take my smoke breaks, I can see how they cut through Ypsilanti. The warehouses and old brick buildings look haphazardly placed next to it, at strange angles to the straight, flat, purposeful line the train cuts on its way to Detroit, and from there to everywhere else, probably.

September 26

I often think of you when I walk home. Sometimes it feels like I’m always walking home, like that’s the only part I ever retain and the rest of it is the daydream.

When I get home, my room feels empty, even with me in it. I watch hazy evening light cast shadows in the shape of branches and leaves on the wall opposite my bed. I look around at my possessions. Necessities piled next to things I keep around to help me remember. Photographs pinned to the wall, some telling prints and posters. You can add or subtract, but you can’t be on your way anywhere.

October 1

I spent the summer after I turned twenty working at a Kroger in Grand Rapids, keeping my head down. All I remember from that time was that my day began, most of the time, with a long, sweaty bike ride on the shoulder of a four-lane road.