For the island has harpooned me.

For the day will not end.

For salt-drunk I swam to an underwater cave and saw clear through but the sea pressed me and I turned.

For I am glad you could not see me clamber onto the stone beach, awkward as a palsied horse and naked but for goggles.

For I come from a family of pen-chewers and nail-biters and all things pocked with the small scars of the mouth and I could never learn to love my body as you did.

For I stood at the mouth of the iron mines, where the stones were torn out like feathers from a pillow.

For the goats have learned to eat nettles.

For I burned my fingers on a glass of absinthe.

For when I return I will reek of oregano and you will never be used to it.

For the only dangers I can offer you are cigarettes.

For in late evening the light is of the earth itself and even the steam glitters geode-purple.

For there are two figures at the edge of my vision, a man and a woman already evaporating into the eeling sunlight and they will be like the Sybill, they will live to be a thousand, their bodies small and useless as the molted shells of cicadas.

For the stones are a wall of riot shields and their clatter is the sound of a heart pulled out, a body slipping silent into water and it is not sound at all.