a seconds time/a second (is) time
a second dispersed
inside a chain of command
what annulled
exchanged when we

all we needed was an exp--
all we needed was an explanat--

exude all the needs we had met

although she said
it consoles me

she said she was the plan

all we needed was an exp--
all we needed was an explanation

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2011/2013ish, Times Square, 5 AM, neon shrieking through the glass and steel canyon, a buzzing citadel of excess where the sleepless wander beneath marquee sermons—Drink This, Watch This, Buy This, Be This.

The air tastes like electricity and old rain, like regret left to simmer beneath digital billboards promising futures no one here will ever see.

vyle. moves through it, another transient shadow, chin tucked into his collar, hands deep in pockets, a man with nowhere to go in a city that never stops moving.

The world hurtles forward, too fast for thought, too slow for escape.

This is sometime during Obama's America, an era that should have meant something more—an era in which vyle.'s own grandfather laid quiet foundations for the man in the White House, his contributions nameless in the record books, but real nonetheless.

And yet, here is vyle., untethered, pacing the luminous gauntlet of advertisements, each footstep a silent question: Why here?

Why now?

The memories descend like an unrelenting tide.

The moments he might have ruined everything.

Trusting people to understand his world when they never could.

They saw only the intellectual polish, the controlled articulation, the practiced poise—but beneath it, just a Chicago Kid, sharpening his mind into a blade, a deterrent against the streets that called to him, against the world that could swallow him whole.

His intellect wasn't armor—it was camouflage.

Nights spent weaving through Hyde Park and Grand Crossing, cutting through alleyways and viaducts, quick with his words, quicker with his feet, every conversation a calculation, every exit route mapped, every interaction a wager between intellect and survival.

And still, here he is.

Nowhere left to land.

Calls to the person lending their couch unreturned.

Phones ringing into static.

Maybe they didn't see his name flash across their screens.

Maybe they did.

Maybe he's too much weight for the fragile ecosystems of shared apartments, too much gravity in their orbit.

Maybe a girl at a get-together over there liked vyle. more than their efforts at the time.

Maybe they had enough that night.

Maybe it's always been that simple.

He moves like a specter through the neon illuminated haze, trying to disappear into the city's thrumming anonymity, avoiding the faces of ghosts—maybe high school friends, old collaborators, people who knew him before he cracked apart, before he stained what he couldn't undo.

His chest trembles, breath hitching, tears slipping unchecked, dispair trailing down his lip.

No energy left to care.

The thought scrapes through his mind, raw and reflexive, but there's no one left to see.

And then—

An object, or many.

A moving alloy, rippling like mercury, fluid and impossible, reacting to his breath, his motion, a presence beyond comprehension.

It shivers when he shivers, expands when he motions, an entity that knows him, mirrors him, recognizes something in him no one else does.

It's watching.

Waiting.

Understanding.

He doesn't know what it means—not yet.

But there is a reason.

There has always been a reason.

Norma put him here for something.

Some unseen force propelling him through these streets, through these endless circuits of memory and loss, toward something he cannot name.

And even now, even in this neon-drenched purgatory, he keeps walking.

Because that's what she would have wanted.