Words from Remembering Claire, finished long ago. She continues to wake me at night although she is gone from my days.
Summer now. Last night the lightning burned the clouds and unspooled a long vein over the bay. A wind came. The rain stayed offshore. I watched through the night, and this morning the sea is glass and bright. On the slopes the beach plums stand motionless. From the hilltop I watch the figures climb from the small cove. They go slowly, and I excavate.
I see Claire elsewhere, beside the big Midwestern river. The banks are strewn with debris. It’s winter. Her hands hide in the pockets of the pea coat, the collar up to shield her face from the ice wind. She looks into the distance and sees what no one else sees. The ghost barge hits the piling and swings in the current. Her father’s body hits the water; he drowns, or doesn’t. She carries the question with her. I hear her sing it with the quiet voice in the car. Pennsylvania and New York and New England fly outside the windows until we reach the northern ocean here. She looks away from me and mouths lyrics I will never hear.
We met in spring. We were young, each eighteen, burdened but carrying hope. A warm inland evening far from here, in North Carolina. She looked like she was daydreaming. Children played ball in the street and yelled to each other, but she paid them no attention. They were an eddy at ground level, and she looked beyond them, to something above the houses and trees. I didn’t know what she saw. Something in the distance beyond my sight. It was the separateness that drew me. Each of us longed to be somewhere, as if we were not anywhere.
The Works of SD Williams 