Shackle myself to a leaking synapse. We may never return to the land of bright warm water and flower, a room of mirrors and copied invention. We mistake university for fire and inky smiles, as we did globalization and other absolutes, because our tongues taste different from each other. The source was not continental, yoghurt geography. I used to think it biblical, perhaps Babylonian - and I still do.

This language is mine. Or, more exactly, my mind's. We have shared it between the Sundays and moonlight. Airplanes that rocket thought I find growing into small talk. Novel are things I borrow for pleasure. There is no need to explain that. Or the friends I must learn to love.