@@@@@They have voices, tooAsk anyone who has
@@@@@They have voices,
tooAsk anyone who has ever lost a limb or a
child or a long-cherished dreamAsk anyone who
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blames himself for a bad decision, usually made in
a raw instant (an instant that is most commonly
red)Our memories have voices, tooOften sad
ones that clamor like raised arms in the dark
I walked on, leaving tracks behind me that
featured one dragging footThe blacked-out hulk
of Big Pink grew closerIt wasn't ruined like
Heron's Roost, but tonight it was hauntedTonight
there was a ghost waitingOr maybe something a
little more solid
The wind gusted and I looked left, into its
pushing forceThe ship was out there now, all
right, lightless and silent, its sails so many
flapping rags in the wind, waiting
Might as well go, the shells said as I stood in
the moonlight, now less than twenty yards from my
houseWipe the blackboard clean - it can be done,
no one knows it better than you - and just sail
awayLeave this sadness behindIf you want to
play you gotta payAnd the best part?
"The best part is I don't have to go alone," I
saidAnd from the
blackness under the house, where that bony bed lay
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six feet deep, a darker shadow slipped free and
stepped into the moonlightIt stood bent over for
a moment, as if considering, and then began to
come toward me
She began to come toward meBut not Perse; Perse
had been drowned to sleep
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She didn't walk; I didn't expect her to walkIt was a miracle - a black one - that
she could move at all
After that last phone call with Pam (you couldn't
call it a conversation, exactly), I'd gone out Big
Pink's back door and snapped the handle off the
broom I used to sweep sand from the walk leading
to the mailboxThen I'd gone around to the beach,
down to where the sand was wet and shining