At the end of the old stories they lived happily ever after, former frogs kissed into crowns, sleepers rubbing red eyes after a hundred years of dreaming. Stunned survivors staring at a horizon of unrelieved horror. Time stuck on a single moment of joy would be unendurable, like orgasm stretched across Niagara Falls and you forced to walk the wire forever. Every house in the town of happy endings is exactly the same, birthday cake bland, pastel walls closing in like strangling laughter.

I wanted to go to sea, lug a canvas sea bag up the gang plank with a hangover, I wanted to watch ports disappear over the horizon in a cloud of screaming gulls, I wanted to sail the world in a rusted bucket trailing an oil slick, I wanted to wake up in Singapore gutters with blue grapefruit breasts and anchor chains bouncing my biceps, I wanted to follow Twan Jim up the Mekong into the heart of darkness without a flashlight, I wanted to ship out to the horizon without a backward glance, solitary as an albatross suspended between waves and clouds, sea foam blown on winds puffed through cloud cheeks pictured on the four directions of maps marked with blank voids of uncharted areas, I wanted to leave the land behind, families, wives, nine to five constraints and the restraints of streets named and buildings numbered, I wanted to sail the boundless seas with a weather eye squinted for squalls brewing up in the distance, I wanted to sail beyond politics and religion, beyond obligations and trees, beyond walls and passports, past the last jetty and buoy and out into the salt ocean circling the globe, I wanted to go to sea, I wanted to go to sea