From the Flash Stash (III) : At the End of the Millennium (originally published in Open: Journal of Arts & Letters)

by Wayne Cresser

I should have taken more care with our sacred texts, yours and mine, which after months of brooding on the matter, I recorded as a list of promises.

When the floods came, pages of these promises were pitched into different boxes and shuffled through a chain of slippery relations until by accident, some of them reached you.

Off to the island they went. Which ones, I do not know.

Surely, they are castaways now and although I cannot see them, I hear them chattering when I put my ear to the sea.

 And surely, I investigated, sounding the racket for parts that went a-missing.

I took extraordinary steps. I talked to experts on late night talk radio— third eye seers, tea leaf readers, cosmic Betties. From them, I learned many things. For instance, saying Abracadabra can cure hay fever. George Bernard Shaw did not care for the work of William Shakespeare. And at any given time, there are about 200 religious causes in these United States.

Now 201.

Later, in a dream, your mother came to me. She kissed me on the forehead and brought me to the place where some of the words were drowned, but she was short on time.

“I am but a compass, my dear. I can point you in the right direction, but you’re the one who must get wet.”

On the ferry crossing the sound that separates island from mainland, I sit in the early winter cabin. I consider the gear I’ll need to fathom the depths to which all those blameless mysteries have tumbled, and I shiver.

Tears followed them, I’m guessing. I can’t imagine they did not leave a trail.