:: This story was published in the journal Vanguard in 2005. Read about Vanguard here

:: An excerpt from the short story The River Looks Like the Sky Looks Like the Road ::

'You hold me gently and press your cheek against my ear.  My stomach feels anxious and I wonder if you can tell this when your skin is pressed against it.

‘Do you see down there?’  I ask.  ‘Don’t you lean forward and think about what it would be like?’

You twist me around to face you and clutching my shoulders you shake me gently. 

‘It’s okay.  You’re okay,’ you say, eyes desperate, as if I’m not the one who needs convincing. 

‘No…  No you just don’t understand…’ I tell you, stepping away and looking down at my hands.  ‘There is a man.  He is junkie thin and dressed in messed white clothing.  I see him.  He clutches a statue of the Virgin Mary in his hands.  Sometimes he holds it right up to my face.  Forgive me Jesus for I have sinned, he sings.  Oh forgive me Jesus for I have sinned…  He says his name is Jed.  Have you never heard the things that he says?’

Your cold hands wipe my cheek bones.  They frantically try to erase the tears from my face. 

‘Its okay baby,’ you tell me.  ‘It will be okay.’

You have hope but it will make no difference because wherever I am that man is chanting those sing-song-sounds from his lips.  When he walks beside me I can find no goodness.  Just an unbalanced feeling that eats at me wherever I go.  

‘There is another man, isn’t there?’  I ask you.  ‘And if he sees us here together he will kill us both?’'