There's no one I’d rather grieve with. The absence of mothers, sisters, boys we call our brothers. Postmen. The deli workers who remember your orders. I'll be with you without our neighbors, prisoners, civil war reenactors. Substitute teachers, cab drivers, florists, waning friends, stargazers.

We will be the benevolent hosts of our ghost town. Waiting for guests that will never come. With crisp linens, jars of water, temporary tattoos. With canaries and slices of lemon. A room for every mood. And velvet curtains. Our lives adorned with rosemary sprigs, walk-in closets, french doors. An unmistakable quiet as all the satellites fall back toward the planet.

We’ll make up beds in the kitchen. Leaving the lawn to the lightning bugs, foxes, and terrapins. We’ll keep chickens. Have meals in the elongated stomachs of abandoned buses. Rename all the roses in the garden, the songbirds on the sill. Call each other long distance. Repurpose laundrymats, packing plants, galleons, cribs.

Migrate, a constant seachange. A house on every beach, beside every river, every mountain. What will we do with our excess of freedom? With so much of it. Of everything. You and I will keep time stashed in the attic, under the mattress, buried in the yard. We’ll change cars at every exit, counting the birds on the wires as we pass. Cloudwatch for hours. Keep up with only the basics and fall back on our habits.

Explorers of our newfound emptiness. We’ll make maps for no one. Travel unchallenged, unhindered, never held back or walked around. Every highway empty. Every stadium quiet. We’ll have everything to ourselves. Take as long as you’d like finishing your breakfast.

There will be no queues. No out-of-stock. No sold out. No “back in twenty minutes.” No waiting list, club at capacity, line wrapping around the block. No stamps, wristbands, “IDs please.” No more reservations. No coat check. No more nesting your bag between your legs like penguin eggs to make space. No more standing room only. No more noise complaints. No more bumming cigarettes. No new friends.

Imagine it: life without parking tickets, missing packages, insufficient postage, several unread messages. No more voicemail. No aggressive drivers, overachievers, or poachers. No shadowy figures on the death march through a darkened lot. No road closures. No out-of-order. No order. No lines for rollercoasters.

We will be all the people. Each other's everyone. The stand-ins. The Greek chorus. The group. The clique and the outcasts. Familiar faces. Each other's acquaintances and strangers. The one you always run into at the mailboxes. I’ll act as your mechanic. Your meteorologist, conspiracy theorist, local talent. Your obscure metal band. You could be my armchair psychologist, my train conductor, my escaped convict. My protestor, farmer, bike messenger. My someone across the room, plucking up the courage to come over. Your skeptic. Your friend.

I know you'll miss them. The everyone. The men in green coveralls that kneel to plant bulbs in the park. All the dog people. The buskers. The seatmates. The sports fans whos bleating bleeds in with the din of the street. How your eye wanders towards birders, valets, Jeep owners. How you fill your pockets with onlookers at sunset. With commuters falling in love on the 2/3. With spectators at minor league games and championships all the same.

You’d give your kingdom for the student who stops to prop the door. For hot dog vendors and t-shirt hawkers. To have just one more heated exchange in traffic. One more high-speed chase. One more news cycle about which fish to eat and who's on the upcoming ballot. What I wouldn’t give. To split clementines, a bar chocolates. To heft someone else’s luggage off the carousel by accident. To eavesdrop on a first date and whisper about how we think it’s going. To play truant. To run out on the check.

We’d miss other people. Too much. One person is not enough to fill out the expanse between stations while graffitists are chased off the tracks. It would be an echoing existence. We’d have to find our way without music. And heists. And speed limits. There’d be no sport in ignoring the instructions. No challenge to driving downtown. No 15 Items or Less.

We’d be unanchored without the particular math of picnic blankets. With no one to make snide comments. Without honest mistakes and poorly timed interruptions. Without playlists, aspiring actresses, cloudy ciders. Why would we do it? What would be the point of keeping the swimming hole a secret? One person doesn’t appeal. Not like the masses. Not like classmates, colleagues in budget meetings, truckers offering toothpicks. I wouldn’t count as company. Neither would you. Not the way a table thick with dinner guests does. Like a game of sardines in the forest. You wouldn’t feel like a memory. Neither would I. Like that time eating sandwiches in the stairwell. Our encircled moments. Our hidden treasure. That I would look for with the fervor of a small-town search party.

How we like other people. You and me. But if it comes to it, we’d manage. We always do. We’ll wear different hats and corporate polos and visors with embroidered logos. Open in the morning and stay past closing. Play the part. Give award-winning performances. If only you’d promise it’d make a difference.

Just in case. I'll crowd the room. I will buy all the ripe avocadoes. I'll write obscenities on bathroom stalls. I'll bust the lock. Upstream you in unexpected rain. Text from unknown numbers. Play telemarketer. Teenager giggling two rows back. Roofing service and locksmith that leaves leaflets in door jams.

I'll be a royal we. The nightshift. And the pilots. The only other person with your accent. And the person who squints and tries to place it. The first person to notice your haircut. The one who suggests, “make a wish,” lifting an eyelash off your cheek.

I'll populate our life. I promise. I'll play profit, preacher, and nonbeliever. Weatherman. Day laborer. Animal control. Celebrity you never have a chance with but you still have A List. Radio DJ taking requests. Anarchist. Qualified candidate. I'll borrow lighters, never return them. I'll tease a second album. A reunion tour. I'll be the band and the breakup.

I’ll take up space. Fake all the unacknowledged gravities of others passing through our lives. Foley the evening pile-up. The incident between loyal patrons. The astronaut in orbit. Echoing footsteps. Fingerprints on bus windows. Tounge-colored wads of gum. ATM receipts. All the evidence that someone was here.

The sweaters hung inside out or slumped in fitting rooms. The specter of someone. There. In the spines and underlines in library books. In sea glass. In brimming trashcans. Junk mail. Evident in the spilt produce rolling toward the gutter. In the bottle rockets that wash ashore. The drooping, old sugar-coated dogs moored to the bike racks outside grocery stores.

I will make myself known in broken telephones. Darts sunk into the wall. I’ll be present in the depth of grass clippings atop the vegetable beds. The torn ends of betting slips. The salt and wet tracked in all winter. You’ll see me in the scrawling tags along the Sawmill, which question which way god went and wonder what’s coming next. Because, because, because I’m like you and if I don’t feel the hum of a few million people around me, I might just combust.

If you take the last piece. If you peel out of the sidestreets. If you come alone. If you develop the photos. I'll correct you on surrealist authors, the direction of European rivers. I’ll walk you home. I’ll keep an eye on the shadows. I’ll be the only person in town that you know. If only you would name your needs.

I’ll feed you the answers to every crossword through an earpiece. Remind you then hit songs and fashion trends. High school friends getting pregnant. Recall the names of architects, the 5th declention, the winning contestant’s final number from that early season. I'll drop pennies for you to find. Grind popcorn into the theater carpet. I'll leave a newspaper folded on the bench. Drive behind you with my brights on. I'll be the upstairs neighbor that picks up the trumpet. I'll send you coupons for shoes, credit card offers, blackmail. I'll set standards, the clocks back an hour. I'll set fires and send sirens blaring at 2AM.

I'll piss in the subway. I'll cut my nails in public. I’ll be the car that seems to follow you for a few too many turns. The family member you're ignoring. The rumored cryptid in the woods. The hiker that goes missing. The disgraced speaker. The reason you lock your windows. The spill in the elevator. The text out of the blue that makes you stop. The shouting match coming through the walls. The standing army. The lost cause.

If it’s just us. If you need. Someone to make you feel embarrassed. Someone to head you off when you’re swandiving into your self. If you want to. See if there’s anything on TV. Try to get the T-bird running. If you’d let me. We could go look for sea monsters in the tide pools. Build a house out of coasters. Meet for lunch at our old place. If you want someone around. With whom you can be quiet. I'll remind you. Of everything past and faded. Everything ahead. When there’s enough room for two and we squeeze in. I'll tell you. I think we're alone now.