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returning to the water’s surface. And so, I departed one lost
memory for another, more deeply recessed remembrance.
I found myself in a familiar darkness, beneath a terrible
storm. Thunder and lightning surged across the blackened
sky. Mother lay dead in my arms, her blood hot upon my
tongue. It was not the copper of ordinary blood, but the
sweet fire of roses and secrets, all of it burning quietly
behind my lips. The flesh of her heart glided down the back
of my throat.
That’s when I realized the Vanishing Nowhere was true
to its name. It was more than a battered dream, it was on
the cusp of being entirely forgotten, filling itself up with
anything that might weigh it down, to keep it from the jaws
of nothingness. My buried shame was nothing but a flailing
lifeline for the grasping, and I was in far more danger than
I knew.
Even as I kept my memories just out of reach of the
clutching gloom, I could feel nothing but pity for the dream
on the very rim of death. My denial of its will to survive
sent explosions of hypocrisy blooming into my darkness,
illuminating my many scars from the Dead Mother—where
some of her still remained, like an infection, growing
tumorous, trying to fill me with all the convictions of
the whited dead. Convictions such as the will to survive
despite all else, a singular cosmic drive, overthrown
only occasionally when the survival of the group takes
precedence. And there I was, trying to cast out a drowning
man from my tiny lifeboat, the fear of capsizing making a
worried coward of me.
My next actions should have been my first—I held out
a terrible memory, and then another, and another. Hand-
feeding the desperate dream brought it into me, where it
began to lay down deep, thirsting roots, anchoring itself to
my newly discovered woes. But the painful reacquaintance
with my neglected past was prerequisite for the dream’s
survival. It fed upon me till it was drunk and fat from ripest
340 | Mark Anzalone