I walked on the bridge. It wasn’t a bridge that allowed pedestrians but it was very late and very dark and very cold and no one was out to see. The bridge unfurled ahead of me and behind me, largedarkhulk. Its towers had masks on them, imperturbable faces of glinting steel. Some professors called it the Neo-Fascist bridge and said the university had built it to be grand, to impress or intimidate anyone entering this sprawling campus reigning in the heart of this city.

I liked this idea. I like grand structures and big human-made things that sprint towards the sky and spread across acres of land. They make me feel safe, provide proof that I belong to a commune that can build things to last.

I walked off the bridge, I walked to the riverbank, and it looked to me, though I could not be certain, that the frozen surface was bloodied at the edges, bleeding on to the banks.

There was a bigroundmoon in the sky.

It shone very bright.

There was endless more sky around it.

At once I knew, I was not magnificent

The cold fell in waves from above. There were folds of cold in the air. I put my tongue out and it tasted like that bad kind of sweet, like the aftertaste of a diet Coke.

I walked to the only lights, to the small house made of logs. Inside, the place looked like a small house made of logs should. He was sitting on the floor, writing on a square scrap of paper that he’d balanced on the ball of his knee.

I took off my scarf and I took off my coat. I made myself at home.

‘There’s aspartame in the air.’

‘Come sit.’

I did.

Patient silence as he wrote.

‘Would you pass me that baggie next to you?’

I passed him the baggie.

He pulled the leaves apart like they mattered.

He mixed them with brown tobacco and thickly sprinkled the mixture into the square scrap of poetry.

I licked the edges and felt the melting line of bitter blue ink on my tongue.

He struck a match and I took a breath.

Patient silence as I smoked.

Patient silence as he smoked.

‘I walked into a cliff once. Right through it. And I came out on the other side, a little wet and a little blue, but there were miles, miles, miles of rock faces that rose into the skies, a sea of land, swept clean by virgin air.’

‘Where?’

‘Milwaukee.’

Patient silence as we smoked. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I was left for broken.’

‘And?’

‘And I was.’

It seemed to me, in that moment, that all I had ever wanted was to touch him, to feel the actuality of his flesh, realize the reality of his existence, to know, to know, to know he lived and he was.