Where the Crawdads Sing

As she pushed off, she knew no one would ever see this sandbar again. The elements had created a brief and shifting smile of sand, angled just so. The next tide, the next current would design another sandbar, and another, but never this one. Not the one who caught her. The one who told her a thing or two.

“All along You thought The fiery current Of your lover’s breast Pulled you to the deep. But it was my heart-tide Releasing you To float adrift With seaweed.”

“Unworthy boys make a lot of noise,”

Child to child Eye to eye We grew as one, Sharing souls. Wing by wing, Leaf by leaf You left this world, You died before the child.

She hesitated; touching someone meant giving part of herself away, a piece she never got back.

The notes floated with the fog, dissipating into the darker reaches of the lowland forests, and seemed somehow to be absorbed and memorized by the marsh because whenever Kya passed those channels again, she heard his music.

On some level he knew she behaved this way, but since the feather game, had not witnessed the raw, unpeeled core. How tormented, isolated, and strange.

A simple hope of being with someone, of actually being wanted, of being touched, had drawn her in. But these hurried groping hands were only a taking, not a sharing or giving.

She laughed for his sake, something she’d never done. Giving away another piece of herself just to have someone else.