EXCERPT

GOD KNOWS WHAT the crows are trying to say. La’es – go down to the bottom of the ocean, to get snagged in the bottom, like a halibut hook stuck on the ocean floor; a boat sinking, coming to rest on the bottom. The seiner sank? Mom and Dad are in danger if they go on a boat? I should go after him? I used to think that if I could talk to the spirit world, I’d get some answers. Ha bloody ha. I wish the dead would just come out and say what they mean instead of being so passive-aggressive about the whole thing. My mother gets up and pours herself a cup of coffee. She used to kick me out of the house when I smoked, but now she doesn’t care. All the same, out of habit, I go out to the back porch even though Dad is smoking in the kitchen. The wind has started up, it’s fast and cold, making whitecaps on the channel. It keeps blowing my lighter out, even when I cup the flame carefully. Mom brought me wind chimes last year for my nineteenth birthday, the expensive kind that sound like little gongs, and they’re ringing like crazy. For Christmas, she bought me a box of smoker’s chewing gum, foul and every kind of vile. I’ve tried tossing them in the garbage, but she sneaks them back in my desk.

The first puff flows in and I sit back, leaning into the patio chair. In addition to all that coffee, I smoked for hours last night. My throat hurts and is phlegmy. The sun is low and light is weak, but it makes the water glitter. The ocean looks black where there’s no light and dark green where the sun hits. A wave of lovely dizziness hits as the buzz kicks in. I have a moment of dislocation. I can separate myself from my memories and just be here, watching the clouds, ocean and light. I can feel my own nausea, the headache I’m getting, the tightness in my chest.