W) From inside your hood listen to your breath: cold white sound in your ears while outside the wind roars from the outer banks. Dead smack in the middle of the winter and you’re there on the shore in the half-dark of dusk bracing against the gale as the nor’easter bucks up against the headlands. Behind you lies nothing but the thin spit of land, and behind that the bay holding up against the squall. As you lean forward the wind holds you enough to betray gravity, to float like a clown with his shoes nailed down. You lean and lean and then stumble over. Behind you, your wife gives a small laugh that you can’t hear. The boys are up the stairs, unwilling to come down to play a role in these middle-aged high jinks.—Jesus Christ, Dad, one of them shouts, you’re crazy. Like what’s up with this? When you turn away from the wind—unable to breathe—Irene is on the sand making snow angels, whipping her arms and legs in and out. It’s a strange motion. To see her supine like that. Arms and legs moving in congruence. It is slightly holy, you think. It is here right now that you’ll confess your infidelities. It is here in this moment that you’ll tell her the whole story.

X) Miracle babe, the substance, smoking a small feeble joint in the car together—as much of your age-old stash as you could scrape out of the baggie bottom. You’re reduced to this, a pathetic call to arms; she’s in your arms and you are in hers with your legs crossed over, both wearing denim. You’ve both given a great confession into the windshield. (I love my family and can’t really see, what? Giving that up. I mean, well, I’m not sure what I mean except I can’t see it, the cost is too high, not high enough, higher than I thought it would be, maybe, maybe exorbitant, or I’m a wimp, scared, too feeble to go for it, unwilling to shake up the world, maybe, maybe not, or else we’re just not right enough.) Your combined breath has fogged the glass all the way across except for two dimples of clarity where the vents are pumping hot air, and through these you can just make out the wooden railing, and past that the sea dark black catching the first quivers of the rising moon. You confess your love for your kids. For your respective partners. For the universe beyond the sea. For the moon in the dense darkness. For the Cape. For the land. For this spot. For the flaccid odors of the pine swamp. For the things you see. For the things you’ll never see. Up in the dune grass a stone marker stands on the spot where the pilgrims first came into hostile contact with the Indians. You admit that you’re saving that. You’re going to use it in a short story. Smoke drifts, you hold it, gasping for air, gasping and then choking and lunging a laugh out. Passing the joint her way, holding the flame over the remnants, a pinkie nail – sized fleck of rolling paper. There is a lightness in your chest just under the ribs.