He can see voices. I know he sees more shades of blue than I do, more silence, more answers. A house where mud breathes out of stars, whole reed mats woven in the black sweat of mane. The blood in his cough, the great hieroglyph, mapped out in deep red roads. The Haunt Night begins its slow drag through the fields.
Hills settle down, wrapped in their blankets of loam.
They curl around their treasures once more coal, so thick and sweet, no one dares to touch. Mere yards away from life, I walk through the farmhouse, make the bed grandfather lived and died in. No one bales the hay scattered across the road, no one picks up arrowheads now. In the kitchen, my grandmother reads, even as the light slowly drains from her eyes and veins, even as her very skin dims. From the cast-iron mailbox down the road, I bring her three weeks worth of Sunday papers, but she has already gone to bed.