Revive - A Quarterly Fly Fishing Journal Winter 2016 | Page 74

This drive brings a feeling of everlasting pre-dawn, as if the terminal sighting of our sun was a few hours before I fell asleep. Here in the most dense and viscous absence of light, where the air feels like chilled, thin oil, I will drive for hours. 3 hours from now it will still be cool and dark and it will feel like dawn has forgotten about me, as if it overslept. My last stop will be for coffee, I slide a Styrofoam cup across the counter and give a blank stare of deep red and darkly encircled eyes to the clerk. He gives no reaction as I appear similar to others who frequent this place at this hour, all of those other grave-bound hearts fueled by vices, intravenous or filling their lungs, devolving them of sleep. My vice is not dissimilar but its source entirely separate. My sickness is driven by some tumultuous, waterborne haint.