I put the shell on the desk, next to a sheet of copy paper. It’s huge and spiked, striated with hurricane swirls of red and cream and sullen brown, a conch ripped from your nightmares. It boasts a single dark and sullen hole at its blunt and ancient front, as black and as heavy as what some would say is the true heart of the universe.

And there it sits. It casts a long, ugly shadow. I hear the sea, its soft susurrus. The tide’s still out but that’s okay. Some things always come back around, so sayeth Wireman. Sometimes you can even set your watch to them.


There it goes again, sooner rather than later this time, vanishing like the last vestiges of a sweet dream or a shooting star. You know you’ve known it, it’s touched you and a part of it will always stay with you, but you’ve lost the moment. The magic has fled and you’re just you again, drunk and alone, staring into the white oblivion of a word processor and wondering where the hell it came from and why it’s gone.

Another mirage. I can never ride the thermals of talent for long, something’s broken. I always crash back down.