Somebody for Arnold,
in the static between stations,
a voice that spells his name like sunrise on broken glass.
He walks the city’s vertebrae,
collecting echoes of almost,
folding them into paper cranes he launches from rooftop lungs.
Neon baptizes the night;
he swears he hears her heartbeat in the traffic light’s slow blink.
Somebody who keeps the meter running
while he learns to breathe underwater,
who trades tomorrow for a map drawn on café napkins—
a continent of almost-theres
where Arnold means “I found you” in every dialect of silence.