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Show Go Love/235 way up high. Renee and Lara are down now, building a driftwood shelter. I stand up and begin the climb, my own voice in my ears. Up where they've gone before me. I could surfcast a goddamn plug straight out to its face, the gray swimming within a hard stone's throw, but instead I'm talking, my voice, my own voice. Breath burns in my chest. I'm climbing as fast as I can, shouting Daddy through the sheet rock. Words held for so long now they ignite From the top of the sand mountain, out into this vast sea and sky-the very end of the line: don't hurt her. Don't hurt her. Daddy, don't hurt her. Please Stop fucking hurting her. All those long days thinking in that tmck, forging your hours into the logbooks between states, ten tons of slaughter turkeys in tow, you've miscalculated. Had you counted on me being drunk? The Christmas Day I was born, me and Mama took each other to the threshold, my eyes shut, her's full open, the hemorrhaging where I drowned for a time, o dark river. On the ferry of my mother's blood, we took each other to the stone world where I drowned in her as she does in me All these years, help me Joey, he's killing me-the words twisting and turning in my dreams Are you listening? Can you hear me? Though the c.b chatter, do you recognize my voice? See how I come for you hidden in her veils? / call your bluff Trucks don't roll up hill, O. W. They never goddamn will. From on top of the sand mountain, my wife and daughter are small, the tiny beach fire, a ribbon of smoke. Renee has fashioned timbers across two ancient trees and built walls on three sides and a flat ceiling. The door faces West, open ocean where the whales are swimming just beyond the first breaker. Lara's wild flowers are laced into the sea lion's fur. I watch this world from the furthest point west in my country, my back to the white cliffs where the sand mountain leans. The whales swim close enough for us to see their eyes and they ours-see my wife and |