It is 4:07 PM, October 12, 1996. We are fourteen again.

You are in your asphalt forest of ranch houses and lowride bicycles, just within reach of the city of angels. Los Angeles, you call it, out of reverence to your father, whose native tongue speaks in ways I never could emulate.

I do not yet know your name, or that you are deaf in your left ear due to a teenage run-in with a firecracker. I am fourteen. My home is spacious, surrounded by real trees that live and breathe. I drink lemonade and eat vitamins even though both make my face pucker.

I am convinced that I am not worth the space, the time, the money and the energy that life demands. A window breaks and I close my eyes.

With age, I have become accustomed to thinking of distance as the time it takes to get there. You are not three hundred miles away from me. You are six hours and twenty-eight minutes if traffic is good and the weather pacific.

Sometimes, on rare red-letter days, you are only seven seconds away: the amount of time it takes for me to make up my mind and touch my lips to yours.

Usually, though, you are six and a half hours. I can deal with this distance as long as you break eighty on the freeway and remember to wear your seat belt. My heart beats in miles per hour, thumps to the rhythm of an upright bass.

We are twenty-four years old. You are lying face up on the linoleum of my kitchenette floor. I am stirring my tea, not looking at you, thinking of how my birthday is in two week and you will be six and a half hours away again. Seven, if you round up.

You pick at your arm, not speaking to me. You are blue again. You are always one way or the other, happy or sad. I have never witnessed your anger, though I know it must be hidden somewhere beneath your skin and ribcage, because I've heard stories of that time you took your boot to the face of a skinhead. You weren't even drunk.

You've been blue for years now. I have only hypotheses and conjectures as to why. You've been stuck with the leftovers from years of adolescent recreation in the outskirts of your city. You've been stuck with the DNA of your father and mother.

You've told me of what it was like when you were fifteen. The sweet pregnant way in which your sister moved about the house when she was seventeen, her belly full of baby, Virgin Mary. You were her patron saint. You tell me of the cat-like reflexes you developed at sixteen, due to conflicts with cops and mohawked punks. You had a baseball bat in your boot and knuckles like bricks. I can see it in your face that even at sixteen you were too old for that shit. But you didn't really have much of a choice.

I want to make you fourteen again, back when I could fix things by breaking windows, back when seven hours wasn't such a long time. I want to make you safe and keep you free from bad luck broken cars and baseball bats. I want to hold your car engine heart in my open palm and make the distance only seven seconds.