Three Kings

by Freydís Moon

As it turned out, marriage wasn’t exactly what everyone made it out to be. It was coexisting in the same place, building bridges when arguments landed like grenades, worrying ceaselessly about each other, being irrevocably consumed by each other. Marriage in the fiscal sense? Simple. Money could be made and tracked and divided. Marriage in the lifetime sense? Complicated. Because love was indomitable, but it could be lost and ruined and squandered.

Marriage was intrusive and messy, but somehow, Peter Vásquez made it easy.

“I would’ve bled every drop of magic to bring you back. I would’ve killed to bring you back.

They slept partially tangled, as they did most nights, with the ocean at their window, shushing and singing.

“You’re the only person I see, Ethan Shaw. I’ve wanted you since I was twenty years old—hardly a sailor, hardly a man, but entirely yours. I think about you constantly. Today I was…” He huffed out a laugh. “I was undone by you.”

“You’re the love of my life, Ethan Shaw,” he whispered, poking at a carrot at the bottom of his bowl. “That’ll never change.”

“I’ll have no peace. I’ll think about you constantly, so I’d like to see this through.”

Here we are. Alive and breathing, loved and safe. Here I am. Held and holding life. Holding life.