Words in Deep Blue

by Cath Crowley

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea inside us. —KAFKA

“At this point I don’t have anything to get up for,” I say, reaching into the bag. “No one has anything to get up for. Life’s pointless and everyone just gets up anyway. That’s how the human race works,” she says, and hands me a coffee. “I don’t like how the human race works.” “No one likes how the human race works,” she says.

It was a strange night. I look back and the thing I remember about it is the sky. I hadn’t seen one like it before. Flat and starless, as though the world had become a box with a lid on it. I couldn’t sleep. I sat on the balcony, staring up for a long time, knowing there were planets and stars and galaxies, but not believing in them anymore.

“How do you feel?” Lola asks. “Like I’ve just had every single one of my organs harvested while I’m still alive.” “Good to know you’re not overreacting,” she says.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged, according to George, that shit days get shitter. Shit nights roll into shit mornings that roll into shit afternoons and back into shit, starless midnights. Shitness, my sister says, has a momentum that good luck just doesn’t have.

“Your sister,” he says, holding up a note, “just told me to fuck off.” “She tells me to fuck off all the time,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t take it too seriously.”

We are the books we read and the things we love. Cal is the ocean and the letters he left. Our ghosts hide in the things we leave behind.