For him, memory has been like the

sea.

It comes and goes by moonlight,

controlled by the whims of a shifting world.

Sometimes, when it's late and dark

it roars like high tide,

flooding the house, drowning him.

He used to cry. Now, he thinks, he's back on dry land

coping...

but then the wind blows in

Atlantic clouds, and a snatch of her. The little girl

who never came home.

The red coast still hangs in the hall where he put it

when they gave it back to him, brushed

clean.

If he looks at it he knows he'll drown.

The world is his lifebelt, a lighter place

where ghosts fade to watery shadows, white

flecks churning in the water.

A man stands on a headland, but it isn't him.

Perhaps it's someone he knew long ago, when he was

Whole,

and a little girl in red ran ahead of him

laughing.

Now that man has nothing

left but endless days, to stand, staring, into the

water.