Black Ice, Cracked Dreams by WC Roberts When the typhoon slammed into Sri Lanka, he cried out from under the dome; Kadhir reached -- gloved hand -- as though to bring himself to think of those he’d left behind the eyes of Tamil tigers, his lesser being drawn to their gravity well and the knife edge of this crater by earthlight, a face behind his visor bearded like a saint, a martyr for the cause thought righteous at the time *who brings it up?* Flea-like he jumps to rid himself of the parasitic trauma of his childhood, trying to acknowledge the change within, brought out in concentric rings -- a revolution this orbit and its ellipse, all going back and back still further, into country of the dead only to lose that part of himself he’d bring to bear upon arrival-- the moon yanked out from under him as he lands, the black ice or a ghost from the machine his knee twisted, destroyed, hurls lightning up his spine and takes his breath away as his body -- a curling stone -- goes and it goes and it goes until it is stopped by a jut of lunar regolith Through his cracked visor streams air and water vapor a slow leak and silent as Kadhir, on his side, peers up at his homeland the island -- having sided with the earth -- turns away from him as if in shame dying, he hears their voices, the voices of the Tamil dead asking why he had not, as they had, moved on; but in this one thing the living are not as able as the dead