Headphones. It’s about the headphones. Walking to and from work. The bus. The train. The airplane. They are permanently attached; extensions of the body. Protection and entertainment wrapped into one small package. Stepping into a word of our own making. Footsteps become invisible, as do the voices outside of our skulls. The headphones never come off, or at least they seem not to. The world around us does not exist save for when we allow it to interject into the space between our ears.