How did I fail you, how didn’t I fail you? Life accelerates and pulls away, redshifting friendship, car taillights burning out of sight. Fell into fatherhood then my own father fell. Entangled in webs of illness and loneliness, the call every half-year became too much or not enough. Unanswered texts, emails, my calls unreturned. There used to be more of you—still you move in the world. Others read you, speak of you, as the intimate thread stretches and slims without ever entirely snapping. Unfriended hollowed-out shape in my chest—you, the wound, so lovely a man—I hope, unhealed.