Shark Heart

by Emily Habeck

Will you let me stand beside you on your plot of earth? We’ll tell the weeds to grow tall around our ankles, and when the wind gives us sycamore seeds, we’ll raise them as sprouts, seedlings, saplings until they overpower, shade, and nurture us. Our trees will grow for two hundred years or more as our union becomes even more unquestionable and strong. Unquestionable because no one will remember a time when we were not creating our universe.

Some might consider Wren’s life boring, but boring missed the point. She was unshakable.

But Lewis changed everything and all of her. She hated the cliché, but Lewis gave her something she didn’t even know she needed. Wren needed it so much she could not resist him once he found her, but when she began to love him, Wren battled indecision and fear, the convincing voice telling her that loving was a risk she could not afford.

With electroreception, Lewis hoped to sense her, know her, and love her even thousands of miles away in the ocean. Nothing he read indicated that electroception extended further than a couple yards. But maybe, he thought, maybe if I practiced, I would never really have to say goodbye.

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.

Wren saw now how passion was delicate and temporary, a visitor, a feeling that would come and go. Feelings fled under pressure; feelings did not light the darkness. What remained strong in the deep, the hard times, was love as an effort, a doing, a conscious act of will. Soulmates, like her and Lewis, were not theoretical and found. They were tangible, built.

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

I wish I could have seen then what I know now. All along, I had the starring role.

“What if this is just the natural order of things? It doesn’t mean we don’t love each other. Maybe it means we do.”

“You make everything better than when you found it, especially me.

“You’re missing the point. I know I deserve to be happy. I hope you realize that you do, too.

After being seen, Wren risked being known, and being known came with the risk of loss.

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

Angela wasn’t old enough to get a driver’s license, buy cigarettes, or vote, but she was the perfect age to worship the first guy who said she was important.

What a privilege it was to mark time with the sun.

Lewis wished he could tell his students that they transfigured his lonely ambition into a dream to change the world; how they were all artists of the highest caliber, fulfilling humankind’s highest duty and delivering the message: faith lived in the darkest rooms.

And without thoughts and memories, what was the man called Lewis Woodard? Nothing. But even nothing was something.

Lewis realized he did not fear death but grief, the ache of being alone and mangled by change.

“Family,” Margaret said again, this time through tears. “I thought it would never happen to me.”

Who am I supposed to be without you? she asked Lewis in her head. Anything you like, he replied.

Joy is a little girl who has no qualms about taking the space she needs with her voice, physicality, and huge emotions. Wren realizes she has much to learn from her.

The last time we were here, I thought I had nothing left. But you had already given me the world. I just didn’t know it yet.