August 26, 2021:

I never knew that girl's name.

We slept together two nights, in the Park, under bushes, without sex, beneath the blankets I'd brought, huddled for warmth.

She was pimply, under age, a runaway. I shared my drugs, bought us Chinese food on 25th Avenue. We talked.

She was nice.

We were lonely and in pain. Runaways, addicts, a community of two. Until the police came, swept us away like autumn leaves, so that we all scattered, and I walked "home", with my blankets, to a different kind of lonely nights, never having asked her name.