Falling Hour


 Table of Contents
 
 Cover
 Title
 Copyright
 Dedication
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 25.
 Notes
 Acknowledgements
 About the Author
 
 
 
 
 Landmarks
 
 Cover
 Title
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Start of Content
 Notes
 Acknowledgements
 About the Author
 
 
 
 
 List of Pages
 
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 The book cover features an image framed in pale yellow. The centered image is bright green and is comprised of small strokes in a lighter green colour making it look like grass. The title is in a bold, sans serif font and is placed vertically on the left and along the bottom.
 
 
 Acknowledgements
 At Willenfield Literary Agency, an immense thanks to Akin Akinwumi, a true champion of literature, for all of your support and guidance.
 At Coach House Books, many thanks to André Alexis for showing me this book in a totally new light with lots of laughs along the way; to Alana Wilcox for your encouragement and acumen; and to Tali Voron, James Lindsay, Crystal Sikma, Lindsay Yates, and Sasha Tate-Howarth for making this book the best version of itself it could be.
 Thanks to Natalie Olsen at Kisscut Design for a cover that uses Hugh’s description of the light in The Conversation to full and glorious effect, and to Emily Cook and everyone at Cursor Literary for bringing Hugh Dalgarno to America.
 Thanks to my beta readers, André Babyn, Keijia Wang, and Nina Jankovic, for your thoughtful feedback at an important stage in the process, and to Simon Okotie, Mauro Javier Cárdenas, Jen Craig, and André Babyn (again), for your kind and generous remarks in support of the book.
 Thanks to Nathan TeBokkel, botanist, beekeeper, and scholar, for being an ever-ready sounding board whether near or far; to Andy Zuliani, for well over a decade now of meals and conversations; to Matthew Tomkinson, fellow Gumboy and word-smoother, for always inspiring me to keep going; and to Bradley Iles for being excited about a very early draft in a way that made me think I might actually be onto something.
 Thanks to my father for encouraging me to write and for introducing me to Coen Brothers movies; to my mother for singing songs, telling stories, and making Doric my ‘language spoken at home’; and to my brother and sister for just being so damned fun to be around.
 I do not have enough words in my vocabulary to thank my wife, Erica. You have filled my life with a happiness I 
 
 Geoffrey D. Morrison is the author of the poetry chapbook Blood-Brain Barrier (Frog Hollow Press, 2019) and co-author, with Matthew Tomkinson, of the experimental short fiction collection Archaic Torso of Gumby (Gordon Hill Press, 2020). He was a finalist in both the poetry and fiction categories of the 2020 Malahat Review Open Season Awards and a nominee for the 2020 Journey Prize. He lives on unceded Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh territory (Vancouver).
 
 
 1.
 From an airplane, or an out-of-body experience, the town I lived in then would look like someone had scattered a sackful of giant concrete dice in a forest of broadleaf trees. The airline passenger or transmigrating soul would mark that six or seven of the cubes had landed in a huddle around the central lawn of a large public park. The grass was the faded green of an old gaming table.
 From the ground, and from inside rather than outside my own body, I could report that the cubes were the colour of sea-damp sand and the grass in the park was steaming. I was sitting on the grass. The seat of my white jeans was wet, as were the palms of my hands. In my lap I held an empty grey picture frame. The pattern around the edges was – well, I don’t know if it has a special name. A grey cascade, or a ziggurat, eight steps around each side. Then empty space to put my hands, feet, or head through, if I cared to. I did care to – all of those, so I tried each one in turn. Then I arranged the frame on the grass, stood up, and looked at it. The frame around the grass, the grass around the frame. Blades shivered, stroked harp-like by invisible fingers of air, and a drop of water trailed step-by-step down the