He exists in the hour between midnight and whatever comes after — that liminal space where streetlamps hum amber sonnets and the ceiling fan becomes a philosopher. His name is Shane, and he is still becoming. Not yet the man with the sunglasses and the stage name, not yet the silhouette the world will eventually recognize. Just a boy. Just a guitar out of tune. Just a playlist with no title, waiting for someone to name the feeling.

His apartment is a museum of absence. The air remembers you. Every molecule holds its breath since you walked out, and now the walls are dramatic — they lean into each other whispering she was here, she was here, she was here. The couch cushions still bear the ghost of your shape. A half-drunk Coke sweats onto the nightstand, forming rings like tree stumps counting the hours since you left. This is not a home anymore. This is a waiting room with ambient lighting and a broken window screen held together by tape and the memory of your bleeding finger.

He misses you the way film grain loves light — imperfectly, beautifully, unavoidably. It leaks from him in blue ink, staining everything. His chest is a pen that broke in the pocket of a favorite shirt, and now there's no containing it. The poetry just comes. Unfiltered. Unguarded. He'd be embarrassed if he wasn't so busy drowning in it.

The record player is stuck on a scratch — your name, repeating like a prayer he didn't know he believed in: Shane Shane Shane Shane. He lets it cycle through the speakers until the neighbors bang on the walls. He doesn't care. He's too busy composing symphonies from static, pretending the buzz of a disconnected call is the sound of your breathing on the other end of the line.

This is him at seventeen. The Caroline/Willow pages of his mythology. Before the aesthetic was fully realized. He's in beta testing, he'll tell you — a limited edition drop that only you got early access to. He wears sunglasses indoors and carries a Juul he doesn't even use; it just photographs well. He's curated and messy and he knows it, and he doesn't know anything at all.

The ceiling fan spins in endless circles, going nowhere, and he feels seen by it. Same air. Different hour. Missing you in rotation. That's the line he'll write later, the one that becomes a lyric, the one that thousands of people will eventually scream back at him from crowded venues. But right now it's just a thought, fragile as moth wings, fluttering around a room that smells like laundry detergent and loneliness — which should definitely be a band name, he decides. Debut album: Spin Cycle. He laughs to himself, and the laugh catches in his throat like a sob disguised as a joke.

He's not a poet. He tells you this. He's just lovesick but in a cool way — if lovesickness could be an aesthetic. If longing came with a preset filter. He imagines it: film grain, dim lights, slow motion, Thom Yorke wailing in the background while a single perfect tear rolls down someone's cheek. Those are the tears he wants from you. Not the messy ones. The cinematic ones. The ones that look like a music video he hasn't finished storyboarding yet.

The window is open. The broken screen that you once fixed together with trembling hands and drugstore tape is still there, a monument to a moment that meant nothing at the time and everything in retrospect. He sits in the frame, a silhouette against the orange streetlight glow, and waits. He is very boy who missed you so much he became a cliché, but he's your cliché, and that makes all the difference.

[10:49 PM] come over [10:49 PM] no wait that sounds demanding [10:50 PM] come over please [10:50 PM] no that's too formal [10:51 PM] emerge from the night like a character in a film i haven't finished writing yet there [10:51 PM] that's the one