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that time of panic would always be remembered as the moment when the bright, bright stars could not save the dark, dark sky.
Even more, she was an acutely strange religious woman who used the Bible as a stethoscope to hear the pulse of the devil in the world around her.
Why, upon hearing the word devil, did I just imagine the monster? Why did I fail to see a lake? A flower growing by that lake? A mantis praying on the very top of a rock? A foolish mistake, it is, to expect the beast, because sometimes, sometimes, it is the flower’s turn to own the name.
If looks were to be believed, he still was just a boy. Something of my age, though from his solemn quietude, I knew he was old in the soul. A boy whose black crayon would be the shortest in his box.
“It’s a miraculous thing, how a ship floats. Always a tragedy when it sinks. So many died. Your love among them. For that, sorry just doesn’t seem enough to say, so I won’t say it but I’ll mean it just the same.
You looked at her and knew when she went to bed, she’d rather be blowing out a candle than flicking a light switch. Modernity was lost on her and died in cobwebs in the background to her old-fashioned grace.
“A snake that could harm you, you don’t have much choice to kill. You wouldn’t be able to leave a cobra in your sock drawer. But a snake that is no threat will greatly define the man who decides to kill it anyways.”
He rubbed his palms until I thought he was going to start a fire. “I suppose you can call me Sal.” “Where’d that come from?” “From the beginning of Satan and the first step into Lucifer. Sa-L.” “All right. Sal. I like it.”
His appearance was his own, but he got there by first taking after Dad.
“Sometimes this world is like red fences in the snow. There ain’t no hiding who we really are.”
“Hey, old girl.” I scratched her neck, and her tail wagged as best as it could. Only a dog could show such love in such pain.
“Call me whenever.” He passed the number to Grand. “Well, so long, kid.” Grand stood watching the car drive away. Stood there long after it went, gripping the paper in his hand and the phone number that would dial through to a pizza shop in Brooklyn.
Our faces got drier and drier, and we went from tissues to sleeves, to brief wiping on the backs of our hands before one day finding there was nothing to be wiped, at least not on the outside.
