Past midnight in the bar, the dummy and I drinking White Donkey - cruelest of all.

His hands move the glass to his mouth. Why do you carry weights? It occurs to him, he tells me, the Roxanne, Roxanne of yesterday is now somewhere now alone just Roxy. Fanzy dress in some corner. Would she were only still with one of us. I cannot stop coughing now that he's told me this. He's sold something to someone tonight. He wants congratulations. Jesus, I am only echo with shadow following down the narrow bar

The bartender will not take my money. I hope he never will. I put it in the dummy's hand and it is gone.

Now erupts the argument over the picture on the bottle. I think it is a man adrift. The salt falls from him in glowing white flakes. The dummy says it is a burning kitchen, dog running for the window, parakeet growing more nervous in his cage. That's me, he says, with the match between my teeth.

           Does he think I don't care? I take my hand out From his back to slap his face. Every light is shining inside me through the top of my head and moving outward to the parking lot to the pharmacy, to the cars running in and out of town. A strange song arcing between my ears Every light. Is shining. Inside me.

Matthew Shindell, in FENCE V6 N2.