The Bog Wife

by Kay Chronister

But she stayed, not because the family needed her and certainly not because she needed them but because she could not at any moment decisively choose the formless horror of out there alone over the familiar horror of back here with them.

The bog was an endlessly needy creature, always in peril, vulnerable to trespassers, to changes in the weather, to its own need for a very particular balance of earth and water.

The Marlinton Public Library was open only a few hours each week. Charlie made a habit of running errands at times that aligned with those hours.

I’ve never been lonely like this. It’s not like before we met, it’s much worse, because now it’s like losing a limb (he had crossed this out, twice, but twice rewritten it) or something that I used to have. I know that’s overwrought. You weren’t a limb, you were your own person. But I mean that it felt natural to have you with me.