won’t let you go, always muttering past failings, present weaknesses. Just when I’m thinking I’ve shaken him off and go crouching ready to leap for the next wave, he lumbers out of the swelter, monstrous with scars, bolts wobbling in his neck, all the old anchoring slights and setbacks remembered. But I still slough him off, ready the old bones for another portly bound into the unknown.
