I keep thinking back to that first flight southwards.

An endless jolting car ride over the flats like this one.

The same tinny audio tapes played to their end and turned over and played again.

Songs whose relentless over familiarity we came to despise, even as we chanted along to them, chorus and verse.

Tuning the radio in search of relief, but only finding sneering governmental proclamations

about the Riverside Monsters, the worshippers of the Troll man, whose churches had finally been found and raised.

Returning to the familiar old songs, the ones we could join in with.

And then we arrived at a dead, ruinous place somewhere upon the lower delta.

A cabin stood alone by the water's edge, and Nana told us that this was to be our new home.

I remember mostly sensations,

roaming through the strange-smelling rooms that Nana had purchased,

watching the play of light through the boarded-up windows.

My brother Em and I,

lying flat in the darkness across dank and mildewed mattresses.

On the first night, we slept until midday and we did not dream.

On the second night, we we wept for our loved ones who were lost or in the clutches of our enemies, and we could no longer sleep.

And on the third night, Nana Glass decided to feed my brother M and I to our God.

She had no other options.

The police had taken our parents and rounded up the rest of the church.

And the newspapers had already moved on from the new decrees and were discussing other matters and the troller man somehow

was not fighting back we heard no news of great violence or great transfiguration and the water

swimming at the bottom of our new garden was stagnant and motionless, no matter how hard we prayed or long we we wept.

...