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am putting it all on the table. I am casting off pieces of my past without hesitation. I am becoming who she wants me to be, even though she doesn’t want me to do it. I am giving up the late nights; I am keeping my eyes forward on the street. I am saying good night to insomnia, saying good morning to the sun. I am everything I hated.
    And what’s more, I am writing new songs—better songs, the best I’ve ever made. “I love the way you have with words,” she says, looking over my shoulder, but somehow replying “Thanks” after something like that just doesn’t seem like thanks enough. I want to give each word a bit of vindication. But I don’t, because each line is about Her, even if she doesn’t know it yet. There is no magic formula, no deep well from which this flows. I am pouring my love for her into spiral-bound notebooks.
    I could throw modesty Her way, but modesty never looked too good on either of us. So, I just nod my head absently. My pen was a life raft in the middle of the ocean, it was the only place I could ever be free. Grammar and punctuation were just someone else’s ownership of my words, so I raged against them, blew through borders, made them mine. I would keep all my secrets inside parentheses. I would hold my breath before every period.
    Now I’m writing Saturday-night words. I’m not dying with the words on the page, I am living for them. They give me strength. I don’t worry about what will happenwhen the inspiration stops, because as long as I have Her, it never will.
     
    •   •   •
     
    We are in the studio now, a tiny space in a squat, corrugated office park outside Chicago. It’s a by-the-hour kind of place, with egg cartons nailed to the walls, and a vending machine in the lounge that is never refilled (someone has written Why bother? over the Sunkist button). The matted carpet has cigarette burns, and the recording booth reeks like old coffee and powdered creamer. “The Bill W. smell” is what they call it.
     
    •   •   •
     
    I am sitting on the curb outside the studio now, watching cars idle at the stoplight. Their mufflers rattle, spitting out blue clouds of exhaust. Their wheel wells are caked with salt from the street. The drivers are wearing hats and scarves behind the wheel, smoking with the windows cracked. Someone is listening to the Bears game on the radio. Across the street in the 7-Eleven, the guy behind the corner is reading a magazine. I am pushing around puddles of slush with my sneakers, watching the tips get soaked, waiting for Her to call.
    The snow is falling again, tiny flakes that flutter from the gray skies, land on the ground, and quickly disappear. I watch them stick to the arm of my coat, then blur away into nothing more than dark spots. Wet wool. I feel the flakes land on the back of my neck, melting, sliding down under my collar. I drop my feet squarely in an oily puddle,feel the icy slush ooze into the soles of my shoes. My socks get heavy with the dirty water. An old man emerges from an office across the parking lot, glances at me for a second as he lights up a cigarette, his hand shielding the flame from the falling snow. He pulls his coat tight and looks up at the sky, eyes squinting, then brings his head level with mine. We both stare at each other across the icy asphalt, me with my feet still in the middle of a puddle. A part of me thinks he’s jealous.
    The light changes again, and more cars huddle at the intersection, shivering, making the air heavy with exhaust. Piles of snow are on the sidewalk, the peaks black with dirt. The breath is steaming from my mouth, the snowflakes collect on my eyelashes. I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket, and I fish it out. It’s Her. I answer it with “My feet are soaked!” and she laughs. I hop up out of the puddle, duck back under the awning. I listen to Her voice and watch the old man toss his cigarette onto the ground, coughing and spitting phlegm onto the ice. She’s talking about Her