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You write from the city to wonder if I am still thinking about you. We know what you want to hear is that my heart spills, a broken faucet of both appetite and affection, cooked together, into a nectar we wear on our tongues but remember with skin. This is not exactly what you write, but it is exactly what you mean.

I am at the beach, exiled from my dreams, when an invite comes from the desert to see the stars fall. It is the night of the meteor showers, a month ago, a day or two before you crashed into Los Angeles. I decline the invitation to write a song:

The sky has nothing left at all, after the stars fall. There is nothing but moonlight after the stars fall, and all I have to lose is you. And a song called “Starfall” drifts out of the sky.

You write, and wonder if I miss you. And the dishwasher in my house back East breaks down, and the property taxes have tripled in five years and now it’s time to give the keys to the county clerk and say “good luck,” and the last thing in the world I want to buy is a dishwasher.

And a call comes from Miami about the fashion show in December, with another invitation for a movie I made about how every beauty has its cancer beneath the surface, starring you, and then it’s four calls, then ten, but all I do is sing songs about the stars and moonlight.

And my cousin wants to know when I’ll get the Persian carpet out of his shop, and Bank of America wants to adjust my APR, and yes it is possible to make a horoscope app for the iPhone that asks you for your birthdate or age or last four digits of your social and spits out the same horoscope for anyone who logs in: “Watch the lines and speeds of everyday structures, because today is high probability of hitting a pedestrian, so you better brace for it by giving the people who love you plenty of treasure before noon.”

And my niece alone in the big city waiting to eat Ethiopian with me thinks she’s got the pig virus, and I stopped drinking the chai at Starbucks and lost ten pounds in two weeks, and yes I think of you often in shimmering electric pulses on my chest and fingertips, because here comes a paralysis of my heart, for which the only cure is a song, massaging the delicate parts of my brain.

Yes, I miss you and I don’t know how to tell you how or why. It’s not the intimacy. There is a shock every time I wake up to your absence. And then I’m out on the beach or under the sky or on a sidewalk and wish I could just see you once, looking over your shoulder, chewing your lip, searching for something. Looking perhaps for a piece of you that is missing, a tiny bit of consequence and conquest we both call Me.

But I’m lost in my song:

Starfall.

The song is robust, and wants to be played before it’s finished.