A boarded-up hotel beside a fishing pier, a pub. Above them both, a church crouched on a hill. Whoever brought Christ to this desolate coast did it with sword and fire, and it's not clear today whether it took, or whether the slow seep of centuries, the long winter nights, would ever let anything be that wasn't as sullen as the hill. The village is that way, too. When you step outside, there it is, the universe, all of it, the glare of it pure, God's unshaven face so close your skin rasps. Whoever raised the stones did a good job of vanishing, too, though the longer I stand here, the more it seems it was deeper into the genes they went, not just into the air.