A funeral procession moved through the narrow, cobblestone streets of Burano. Four men carried the coffin on their shoulders. They were followed by people wearing mourning black. I would have you for another ten years. I didn’t know. The Italian winter light was brighter, warmer, than we expected.
The animal life here has grown robust: the roaches, the mice, the creatures who are late for work and tunneling underground.
Rita already knows all flowers are not created equal. Hibiscus can’t be picked—they shrivel within hours. Yet the ancient film star tells her this and other well-known facts.
Now it’s too late for us to return, though something calls us back with the force of an obsession. A bloodied horizon dulls gradually into night. We seem so separate from that fire lowering itself daily into absence.
The power cuts out. Ma lights some candles off the gas ring and slams chips into the oven. I’m so disappointed the nurse outfit I got for my birthday split its sides, I’ve been wearing the hat for a week.
A little boy is blowing bubbles. They whorl and drift and swirl and he reaches his arm into the air to catch one. Pop! His blonde sister giggles and shoots some more, while an elderly lady staggers up, hand on hip to watch.
Before the shouting starts, you hear the baritone bell on the far side of the canyon. A dog joins in with a howl, cutting through the chili-chili-chili of the morning birds and the gurgle of the fridge and the flick of your dental floss.
I’d always known Karen fancied him. “It’ll be fun,” she said. Sometimes, she liked putting her fingers in my mouth. When she pushed them in, she’d push too far.
Four nights straight the stranger sits in her section paying for cans of Pabst from a pile of tens. Friday night, they park at the reservoir and pass a silver flask, make bets on what’s Mars or stars. Next morning, he’s long gone, along with her purse full of tips and a new pair of panty hose.
The ghost was hungriest at night. Groaning from starvation. Scraping the walls. Dizzy and running into furniture.
For three days, the Traveling Wall—half, maybe three-quarter size—stands on a hill in a far corner of the fort, away from the bustle of the main post. Families of a certain age and old-timers in boonie hats file past shiny black panels.