Julie

“The night is bright with the moon. Look down over Water Street. On the lonely stretch between where the houses end and where the sea bites into the land, a tree casts a network of shadow that stirs and bloats in one spot, as though putting fourth dark fruit that droops, then drops from the bough. It's a figure come out from under the branches and onto the street. It stops, drifting in place like a plant on the ocean floor. Then it travels again all the way down the street to the graveyard. It passes among the headstones that have flourished with the town, but it does not linger at the freshest mound. It continues to the edge of the cliff. There, it lies down on its stomach and places its neck upon the lip of the precipice, as though the earth were a giant guillotine. It looks straight out to the sea that stretches four thousand miles due east, and sings.”
― Ann-Marie MacDonald