I was comfortably alone, but split in two. And sure, you know, I guess there could have been moments of loneliness when I would be staring out the window of a café or a bar and watching all those real people draw trails with their heels; their eager hands would be coupled around another’s waist, and I wondered where they found people like that, people who suddenly made them think they were corner pieces of a ten-piece puzzle. I’d sit on the other side of the glass, looking into the zoo of the world, all the hyenas giggling at each other, their laughs echoing and bulldozing the yellowing or browning leaves across the sidewalk. There would be times when I’d see a person walk by alone and they seemed so uncomfortable at the idea, often looking at their watch as if they were meeting someone, and I labeled their hastiness under my breath – a farce. And always, always, always at the bottom of the coffee, the whisky, the end of the cigarette, I’d look around at the window and I’d follow it to the edges of the wall and then to the other two walls, and I’d start to think of myself as in the cage. Maybe they would look in upon me, so I planned to try to spread my feathers, do a little preening, and sit up on a post, looking at my slow watch pretending I wasn’t really divvied out somewhere, somewhere, somewhere else. The solitude was as solid as the shadows.