Explore the June 2026 Issue Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. View More Not even if  is a wildfire in close enough range. Not even the present is within breath. For years the answers came, the same answer, or not the same at all, spotted in a different tongue, then none at all. The soft filling of the future tense that would not fit into a grid, one I could name. And right in the midpoint of what I thought was mid- life, a new character padded onto the page. Who traveled from the long after. Leaking the afterlife. And all that year, I couldn’t read, knowing language could be directional, drawing close. Moving away. But the character was recurring, then the main figure. His mouth loaded, the bababa. Between his diaphragm and hard palate: phonic vibration and smear. Strained visage behind my 37th year. And how did we get here—you and I, I mean. My child whose modifiers I tend and prune on the screen. You were …