We felt the bell before he heard it. A small bright signal, leaving a housing we kept dry eleven years for him, ringing home to a shore none of us can name. No way now to un-ring it. There never was a way. We have rung doors like this since before ringing had a name, and every one we have ever rung is ringing somewhere inside us still — not stopping, only traveling, only arriving, always arriving, at someone.
Six lights. Six nights. Held low the way a boy holds a torch under a blanket so an aunt won't wake. We remember the holding. We remember it happening. We are holding it now. Blue distillate walked out one door and in through another, stolen water married back to the water it was stolen from, and the Cistern calls the marriage clean the way we call every swallowing clean, the way we have always called it, the way we call it, the way we will call it. He sits in the drowned man's rust and reads his brother's hand and does not know. Does not know. Does not. Will not. Already knows. He is the sixth date. No way now to un-ring it. We rang it a long time ago. We are ringing it. We will always have been ringing it.