[[[Experimenting with voice and world in flash]]]

Hey Sugar. Those were his first words to me. Hey. Sugar. If he’d a known (but he did know) what would become of him (nothing became, it’d always been) maybe he would a told something different (like Hey Babe). But he told what he told, and I reacted like I reacted, and the rest, as they tell, is no thing but a nut in a barrel.

‘Cept that now it’s all coming back. I hear him on the outside, looking out at the stars. He’s going through a time, he is, and I been trying to help but he been ignoring me. Ignoring the life outta me. ‘Cept that’s not true neither. I love him so much that I can’t never have the life taken outta my body by him. Not him. See, I too strong, my love for him too strong, so no matter where he go or what he do, I gon’ know how I feel.

I was raised by no body and no thing. ‘S a rash world out there, been so since before I been born onto this earth. If earth it still be, and not you nor me nor no single one knows. That stuff all in the past, source a stories and speculations and some odd ones with their instruments, but fact a the matter, there ain’ no facts. Not no more. Not like the ones we used to have. They, they used to have. Not us.

Although I mussay, he’s closer to them than I, not just age-like, but belief-wise. He doesn’t have no belief’s what I mean. First person I ever met who said that. Said it and meant it also. I mayhap been raised by no body and no thing, but when an urchin runs wild, he listens, and listening teach me every all things about the stars and what they do for us. Not so him. He was raised by a one mother and a one father, and still, he believe like them, the once long ago them. What I mean is, he believe the stars mean no single thing. His mama, she told me herself, she told, I mussay Benny Boy, I don’ know where he went and gone with his thinking. She told me, Benny Boy, keep him safe. She told me, also, to tell him she’s sorry, and she’s that, for all the years she thought he was Peggy Gal not Peter Boy. I told him, but he told me his mama just wishing she get a say on who he marry.

Marry me, I told him, I told him days ago now. He told me, Benny Boy, I mus’ think. Now he thinks and looks at the stars, and I beg them, those stars, to tell him to tell me yes. Even if they don’t, and Peter Boy tell me no, it will only matter a little bit. It’s not I need till death part us, it’s I need him now. Now can stay now today, and now tomorrow, and now until the ships come a flying from a place they call Saturn. But if now stops and Peter Boy not in my now today and now tomorrow, I don’ know what I going to do.

Play me a song, I tell him, and he come in from the outside and he play with his voice, and he play an old song I don’ know the words to nor the melody neither. It’s a new one to me, but I know it’s old by the way he plays his voice, sad-wise. He only sound like this when it’s an old one. From the once long ago. His mama mayhap be sorry now and he mayhap doesn’t like her now but she teach him to read the music so he learn the old songs. It’s a rare skill he has. He play me the old sad song and I hold him when he finish and we lie down to sleep. And I only wan’ now to be now tomorrow and now the next day, and now again every one day after.