Tidal waves. That is all I see. At first, that is.

Tidal waves and then her silhouette, milk white and becoming clearer as the waves crash down. Clarity comes only when she drowns.

This happens again and again. Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday… You get the picture.

Here I am walking in the daze that I wake into, feeling that anything, nothing, nothing at all in the whole world could be as precious as these fleeting moments.

Jackhammers down the block rat-a-tat-ram into the city’s flesh, picking away at asphalt scabs that lay for far too long, tarred and torn by rubber and rain.

And tonight… tidal waves. That is all I see. At first.

 Friday morning. “Hello I’m calling on behalf of _______ __________.” This is not my voice. “Yes, I’m canceling her subscription. I have her digits handy, yes. No she can’t come to the phone, she isn’t here. Sorry, why should it be a problem? She’s unavailable. Not in this dimension any longer… …Yes! Yes she’s dead! OK? Happy?” My real voice; cracked, vocal cords knotted by phantom hands. The pressure is unbearable. And no jackhammers today.

“OK. Can we deal with this? Good.”

Saturday. Oh what about Saturday? Saturday is empty. I take a look out my window and see all the worker bees put on their night visages. Lace up, slip into, slink down, shed skin, new fold. You know the deal. Children of the night. Time to forget their miserable lives.

I take up my notebook. Huh, sounds like a lyric to a tune I’ll never write.

I’ll write it down and never look at it again.

Sunday afternoon. Rain. Beating. Batting rhythms of gray mercury into my skull.

Sunday night. Thunder. Booming. Banging tempos of cobalt into my pulse.

Somewhere between the days. Sleep. Lullabies via satellites rush into my heart.

The sun. It’s cold. Sleep.

The sun. It’s warm. Awake.

We’re out of milk. We need milk. I go out and get milk.

The sun. The streets, damp with the late night trash the surge of rain stirred from the gutters. The street, the turn, I walk. The store.

The bell. That ding. I draw my coat closer to my hollow body. The ash white faces of the people. The city dwellers. The crazies. The takers and the givers. The Penn Station prophets and Jack Daniel disciples. The deep set eyes of the spider dealers, irises reflections of their venom. The doers. The darers.

The ash white faces lit by fluorescents, buzzing away, away, above.

My shoes. They squeak. I nod at the corpse behind the counter.

He stirs to life, mumbling cottonmouth cordiality.

Lazy bones knows me, hasn’t seen me.

We’re out of milk. We need milk. I go to the back of the store and get milk.

 There’s a girl at the back of the store.

A girl at the back of the store.

A girl. Her name is Claire. Her name is Wanda. Her name is Susie. Rachel. Jennie. Zandra. Gretchen. Her name is Saga. The tales of the ages. The whole world lifts into her gaze, taken over the bridge into her eyes and stored there for what seems like forever, passing from a millennium into a century, a minute, a moment, and to me. And is gone.

My blood is sour. I can feel it. Stung by a wasp from what must have been many summers ago, my blood is sour and stinging.

Then the earth shakes. The ashen faces flicker out.

And the flood comes and we’re all gone and forgotten.

In the last seconds before the waves crash into us, she reaches out for my hand.

And we drown.