denny

The call came late, in the quiet, in the
bleak before the break, and her voice was a
whisper that woke something in the back of his
mind, startled it awake, followed by a silence, for
a moment that felt too much longer.
She said: “Denny is lost at sea,” and he wanted
to ask, “How?” but he knew the answer to that,
how friends he knew and those he didn’t got
“lost at sea.” It happened all the time, except
it didn’t, too, and he has lived for 35 years with
the image of a friend desperately trying to live,
in the dark and swirling deep, fighting
against his fate. It’s never a
nightmare, though, for it’s not nightmarish. Indeed,
there is a measure of
peace to it all, it ending, that way, oddly enough.
More than that, it was just
a fact of life that became a figure in the safety log:
“Lt. Dennis O'Malley: lost at sea.”
"We launch tomorrow, at six!"