Jun 1, 2021
gently drowsing
* * * *
Now, gently drowsing, she remembers the whistle blowing. It surrounds space, time, sleepy summer evenings many years ago: a remote sad wail involving sleep and memory and somehow love. They’d fight on summer nights because it was hot and [she] cried and the icebox made a dripping noise, and because the whistle blew. But they loved each other, and the whistle–now it’s a part of sleep and darkness, things that happened long ago: a wild lost wail, like the voice of love, passing through the darkened room and softly wailing, passing out of the sphere of sound itself and hearing.
— William Styron, from Lie Down in Darkness (Vintage, 1992)
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