In the space between Kraken Bay and Pug Mountain, a lighthouse stands and casts its angular glow across every kind of emotion, and not just the human ones held tight in the cabs of passing cars. The town of Eye Rhyme glistened like a pearly snake skin. I rolled past my aching shoulder and tried to gather Sylvia in my arms, fully aware that I was her most disappointing and unaccomplished love interest ever, and, as expected, she smiled and dodged away. She hadn't left me yet, and I held that fact like the last licorice stick left on earth in the fist of a diabolical three year old. Like most people in Monosyllable, I experienced upon waking the raw tug in the heart going on between pride on the one hand and gutter-level esteem on the other, and somehow pushed myself up each dawn to make it to my boring, demeaning job on time. I drove the half mile to Kraken Bay and once stationed at the desk, poured then pressed my first cup of joe against my head like it was a cube of emollient or athletic salve to maintain my endurance for the next round. Out past the barnacle mound, the seal herders were hard at work like cartons of bubbling diesel, the spiky sun whistling through the drizzle to ignite each gale-blasted face.