?Interrobang! · Track 22 · middle
Keys to a Place That Isn't There
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): the keys to every home she ever loved. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Speedboat Sam — gondolier from Venice; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: Sandy Island, the place that never existed. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Sam rows slow gondolas though he dreams of speed; left his keys to every home he loved on an island that turned out not to exist. Can you hold keys to a vanished place?
Lyrics
I found them tangled in a piece of sailcloth. Brass and steel, worn smooth by a thumb. Keys to doors that aren't there anymore. They called him Speedboat Sam. In Venice. Pushing his gondola through the green water of the Rio di Palazzo. One slow stroke at a time. The echo off the stone, the only answer. He told the tourists stories of the Doges, but his eyes were on the vaporettos, the wakes they left behind. A life measured in three knots, dreaming of horsepower. Can you hold the keys to a vanished place? A deadbolt that rusted into dust in a wall that fell down in 1993. A simple latch on a screen door that slammed shut for the last time. This one, for a garden gate. This one, for a bedroom she shared. Can you hold the key when the lock is only a memory? He had a map. For 136 years, everyone did. Sandy Island, in the Coral Sea. Put there by a whaling ship, the *Velocity*, in 1876. He sailed to the coordinates. Stood on the deck in November, 2012, where the land was supposed to be. And saw nothing. Just the deep blue ocean, swallowing the sky. No sound of waves on a shore. Just the engine's hum, and then, the silence. Can you hold the keys to a vanished place? A deadbolt that rusted into dust in a wall that fell down in 1993. A simple latch on a screen door that slammed shut for the last time. This one, for a garden gate. This one, for a bedroom she shared. Can you hold the key when the lock is only a memory? The perfect place to leave them. The island that was only ever a promise. A ghost on a chart. He let them fall from his hand. A final home for the homes he couldn't keep. Each key a small, cold ghost, falling toward another. One for the front door on Elm Street. One for the apartment above the bakery. One for you.