"Why can't you ever let anything just go?" Cora cried. "Just let it go."
"You think I like remembering everything?" said Tom. "There's this deep well--dark, dark blue with no edges that I can see--and I just keep dropping deeper and deeper."
"What are you talking about now? Can't you just finish an argument, for once?"
"Finish it? There's never an end, don't you get that? That's what hollow, what empty, means. It still hurts. You blink, and I can roll out this anger at what happened before, at what you did or didn't do, at what I did and didn't do, like it happened yesterday. And it's been years. You know all that. Of course, I still get mad. Getting mad hurts less than being sad. Sad's like this grip that squeezes and squeezes and never lets up. The only way to breathe is to roar."
"Roar, roar, roar! The past--let it go! You need some help."
"Why do you think I'm still talking? What do you think I'm doing here? Throw me a goddamn rope."
"No! No, you . . . coward! Swim for it. Swim out of your goddamn imaginary blue hole yourself! Or drown. Drown, drown, drown, drown."
Draft in motion, from "The Devil's Acre."
