Shark Heart

by Emily Habeck

you, with your efficient days making lists researching you, who can make a spreadsheet about almost anything. You make everything better than when you found it, even me.

Wren let others take up all the space they needed, because she was always doing just fine.

Yet, just as he married these known qualities, he also married her vast unknowns. And she, his.

She missed the illusion of grass and sky kissing at the end of the world.

If we don’t value artists as the most visionary among us, what will be left of this world? What is left but the pursuit of more money, more things?

When Wren was alone with her body, she also had to be alone with her repetitive, bleak thoughts.

In their innocence, they failed to grasp the labor of losing a partner, how the tasks of simple existence would become logistical feats and one person’s burden.

joy and grief are human birthrights, but mostly, being alive is everything in between.

Wren started dining alone in cafés, diners, bars, and restaurants just to be near other people, the movements and sounds of lives being lived together.

She did not choose to be born, but she chose, in this moment, to live.

“Well, when you miss me, you’ll go somewhere big and open, a place like our lake or any place where you can see the whole sky. Once you’re there, take a big, deep breath, and start to notice all the things we notice when we’re together.”

was cliché but necessary that Angela found enduring solace in the stars. She did not contemplate the presence of mystery or infinity. Instead, Angela appreciated the cosmos’s relative constancy.

As they say in the theater, suspend your disbelief. Otherwise, the reality of this world is very much like yours and mine.

I’ve been thinking lately, maybe we do get new performances of the same day, opportunities to be more accepting and loving. Maybe practice, rehearsal, is also the way to freedom. We can start over. Time can loop back on itself, and here I am again with you, Margaret, trying.

In nature, Wren realizes she is becoming more like her mother and thinks, How wonderful.

The world is a big and small place, and life, a terrifying and sublime journey.

The small hand wants to pull away from her mother’s safe hold. The small, dear hand needs to swim, explore, love. The ocean cannot be contained; neither can love; neither can Joy. Wren loosens her grasp. It is so hard to let go.