S■S

I paint fresh stripes of green across the parched road. I lift a lukewarm cola in tribute to this languid season. The equatorial sky dissolves into thin lavender. Night slides in. I lash the wide sky above to the distant sky beyond—sky to sky. Then I breathe in, breathe out.

Night-flight. The self that once called never looking back "freedom" still curls inside my legs. Getting lost feels like grace. I dive into the dark, learning what forgiveness like.

Be here now. Dry air. The Southern Cross burns clear. Tonight I don't need to arrive anywhere. I pump the pedals, empty-minded. My body blends with everything around me. I edge toward the eternal. It seems absurd that I'm on the planet's far side—Tokyo, Cairo, Lusaka. The whole world is July, vast, beautiful, boundless. And yet—I am here.

Sendamenipo, Usiku wabwino, Kwasiya—what a beautiful night!（なんて美しい夜なんだ！）

Sometimes the battery shorts out. Darkness sinks deep, swallowing human voices. Birds and insects take the stage. I float inside their chorus alongside street-market odds and ends. The shoeshine boy and the woman selling vegetables—daydreams, perhaps. I let body and mind rest. I tell myself not to think at all.

Sendamenipo, Usiku wabwino, Kwasiya—What a beautiful night!（なんて美しい夜なんだ！）

Loosen a single screw and time stretches, then contracts. Clock-hands race, then spin backward. Red earth underfoot. Wheels whir. Today and yesterday clasp a church morning where people sing and dance.

Day after day I'm hounded by computational burn. I parse emotional inputs and outputs on an endless loop. Truth is, I could stop anywhere. When I'm tired, I simply say hello. Every stone, splinter, and mud wall I pass carries a living poem. It slices the wind.

"No matter how far you travel, you can't outrun yourself," I say.

For a blink I read the weather. I rinse my memories yet shoulder an unerasable stain. It feels like meditation. A prayer with no address. All right then—be nowhere, be everywhere. Let's take the road that isn't a road.

Kilometer after kilometer, memories rewind and fast-forward. They glitch like Zamrock.

I trust the laws of physics. I surrender weight to the handlebars. When they sync with the tilt in my chest, I drift right, drift left. Somewhere a dog barks.

Gently, gently, lost in dust, I am he as you are he, as you are me and we are all together. Everything drifts toward oneness. Who could sleep on a night like this?