By jlor jlorenz@saber.net
Date: 3 August 1999
Prince William Sound
/That windswept night found me sitting alone, in a car, on a high pier built overlooking the inlet of Prince William Sound. I was surveying the gale driven windwhipped silver waters of Prince William Sound on that stormy night,
my bundled up, twice-alone, about-to-be-broken heart looking down from the
blackness on the pier onto a bright clean coastguard cutter docked there, passing the night, looking much like an haven against the lashing waves. It was all lit up, making repairs, washing away the ocean's salty spray, securing its decks, hatches and gear, preparing bandages and gauze, making ready for a long journey to someplace else, far away. It was due to set to sail the next day.
That coastguard cutter represented my last moment of love. I still felt safe, perched high above the fickle, crashing waves: safe from the dark, seething trouble that was about to break on my cheery, warm, and unprepared life. Like that ship, I, too, should have been securing my heart as I surveyed the darkness, wind howling, whitecapped waves attending my last silent watch among sparse stars. I falsely felt warm and safe inside my illusion, thinking my life was untouched by the battering gale, never imagining my plans and dreams being blown away.
I couldn't see, until too late, the murderer lying in wait. The one who I still thought of as my love and my friend curled up on the couch back at home, watching t.v., calling me 'honey' How could I know she was going to hack me to pieces when I came in the door, and would soak up my life with ten thousand miles of gauze at once, ignoring the spreading stain of an heart cut in shreds---no, not cut: savagely hacked away, who would soon leave me on the street to die, not caring at all about my silent plight. No. I just sat there, happy, shivering on that windswept scary, feeling-safe night, falsely secure and warm, just like that cheery coastguard cutter, unaware of danger and ready to sail into the future, my illusion of love all alight.
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