The Spear Cuts Through Water

by Simon Jimenez

Bone slid into brain and in that bright firework behind his jellied eyes Vogo was propelled out of his body, as if two hands had shoved him off the edge of the last precipice of this world, his spirit crashing through the heavenly bands, the banners of color and sound that lay like sediment between these choruses, until he dropped into the churning waters of the Sleeping Sea, where upon the cold detonation of its surface he scattered, like pieces of a dropped porcelain plate, into the hours that bind our days, and I thought about my mother who jumped from a cliff when I was little, and I wondered if this was what she saw when she ended things, as I ended things, what remained of Vogo gone far away, and yet not far at all, as the crisscrossing waves closed over these pieces of him like linens folded by a pair of loving hands.

I heard him call the Daware man’s name. The Daware man was on a skiff he had cut free from Luubu’s disintegrating ship. The Daware man called his name back. If one listened, one could hear it in their voices. One can tell a lot, even in such a state, by the way someone speaks another’s name.

But on you go. Your movements automatic as you live through each day and sleep through each night. You know what it is to be alone. You’ve been too scared to be anything else.