The Honey Witch

by Sydney J. Shields

These are the wild women who run barefoot through the meadow, who teach new songs to the birds, who howl at the moon together. Wild women are their own kind of magic.

She tried love, once. It didn’t work, and it is not worth the risk of trying again with someone new.

Her mother loves to remind her of her age, as if it is a reason to stop believing in magic. She rolls her eyes at the thought—yes, she is a grown woman, and is that not magical in itself? To have survived this long, despite the world’s penchant for beautiful dead girls?

But what happens when the girl keeps living, when she ages proudly and defiantly, without abandoning imagination, or stories, or that secret wish to find magic wherever it hides? Well, then the poets would call her a witch. It is better to be lost in a beautiful daydream than trapped in a dim reality.

“But shouldn’t she want more for her life than that?” “What any woman wants for herself is not for you to decide. You would do well to remember that.”

“Well, that’s how all love works,” August says. “You can’t love anyone without the fear of losing them, without the forethought of grief. There is an inherent loss in love, but that does not mean that love is not worth it.”

Althea’s passing was peaceful, but Marigold’s grief was not. It never is. It is a mistake to think of grief as an absence. It’s more of a dark, shadowy thing that sits in constant periphery, always there, always stealing air and making it hard to breathe.

“I must say,” she continues, “your courage to fall in love even after loss is admirable. I am not entirely sure that love is worth the risk of heartbreak.”

“Grief is often too strange and too vast to fit into words.”

People think of loneliness as a feeling, but it’s a presence. It’s a living thing that takes the shape of the company you wish you had.

I once believed that I was made for a life without love, but you have inspired defiance in me. I love you. All of my wants fall into the shape of you.

“I knew it was time when I was the only thing standing in the way of the rest of your life. When you get older, people want to take care of you, and that’s so lovely and comforting for a time. But eventually, you get so old and so sick that all people can do is take care of you. They cannot move on. They cannot live their own lives. If you love them, you must leave them. So, I did.”