David Nahm - Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky

With a fumbling rush, the man turned and got back into his car and slowly drove past her and on down the road. She flailed her arms, screaming at him, pounding on the side of the car as it passed, yet he continued. She leaned down and tried to look into his car at him, to see who it was, but the interior was dark and she could see nothing more than the dashboard lights reflected in his glasses for a brief moment. He wasn’t even looking at her.

Twin gashes, twin pools of blood, twin dying lights as the car disappeared on the road and Leah, knowing these roads, knowing that the black line of country road would fade white and glittering in the distant night coming, she pulled her coat up tight, relieved to be alone. Twin lights dying and she walked along the edge of the road in the growing snow back toward the distant dome of Crow Station’s artificial light reflected against the low sky. And she touched her neck. And she walked and she sang now too as the waves of snow flooded in around her, but she rose against them, faster and faster toward the unseen surface, toward an unknown light. And she touched her shoulder which roared and she rose against the sharp tongues of the wind and knives of the night. And she touched her lips and she said O Jacob as she walked along the road and walked along the road, the song now in her head and on her lips, smeared and screaming, though she did not know the song, now singing O Jacob , she made a new song, a new melody and new words, made them up as she walked and her body sang thunderbolts of pain with each step. And she remembered when the sky was clear and open and her father was coming down the stairs and her mother was calling her name and someone was knocking on the front door and she remembered the cars passing by the window of the room she shared with her brother where they counted the shifting shapes and she sang him to sleep. In the distance down the road, she could see lights approaching.

The boys, howling. Fireworks and strange words. The boys with long hair and rough breath. Leah watched them caper off and holding Jacob’s hand, she walked him home, feeling his wet, small fingers, feeling the ruin of another lost Saturday, the sun already on the wane, feeling the slow cessation of his tears, and feeling for a moment a sudden writhing of pity and sorrow, and she bent down and held him, his wet clothes soaking her, the smell of dank water on both of them, and said she was sorry sorry sorry and somewhere they still heard the boys howling, their voices singing songs to burn down the coming night.

THANK YOU: Jennifer Connerley; Paige Stevens, Alex Stevens; Rick and Sandy Nahm; JD Dyche, RW Dyche; Todd Nahm, Laura Lewis, Mary Robert Garrett; Charles and Tamara Lockard, Megan Knagge; Robert Biggers, Finn Cohen, Jim Higdon, Matt Kalb, Clint Newman, John Norris, Eric Roehrig, Ben Spiker, Michael Turner; Kathryn Lofton; Helen Emmitt, Mark Lucas, Milton Reigelman; Eric Obenauf and Eliza Jane Wood-Obenauf; Patrick Mortensen, Steph Cha; the City of Danville, Kentucky.