Sublime

Maybe Ma was never coming home.

The lonely became larger than she could hold. She wished for someone’s voice, presence, touch, but wished more to protect her heart.

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

Truths everyone should know, yet somehow, even though they lay exposed all around, seemed to lie in secret like the seeds.

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.

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.

She’d given love a chance; now she wanted simply to fill the empty spaces. Ease the loneliness while walling off her heart.

In the mountains, she noticed, the time of sunset depended on where you stood on the hill.