If I sat next to you, spoke only to you, you would feel the warmth of my breath. As our shoulders touched you would shift, and I would know your movement as response. This is a world and we are in it.

And still, as if this matters, I worry that you can’t see me; I worry that you will go on without me in mind–even as our shoulders continue to touch, even as you carry my voice in your ear. At times I’ve wished for a structure to lean on, a landmark that’s larger than the life around us, something that would govern us all. Maybe I want this because we almost had it. In truth, I was almost our Capital City.

Did you know the longest total solar eclipse that will occur in the 21st century was experienced most fully this summer in Shanghai, in a city. China’s most populated city. For six minutes and thirty-nine seconds, as the moon passed directly between the earth and the sun, for all those bodies all was darkness. I know how that feels.

But daylight is the great extravagance. In the end I know this is true–even if I fall again and again into my private realities–because despite everything I am built out of lives.