Shark Heart

by Emily Habeck

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

I’ve had it wrong all along. If magic exists in a real way, it is not here to dazzle us with all that is unreal to the naked eye. What if magic is just mislabeled peace? A peace that says suffering doesn’t have a purpose or reason. A peace that says meaning is the medicine. A peace that says I don’t need to know how or why.

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.

He looked to Wren to remember. He always remembered Wren.

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

He was an aimless kite in search of a string to ground him to the world, but instead, he’d found Wren, a great, strong wind who supported his exploration of the sky.

Just pulled over to nap, and I had a dream you were still here. You had this goofy, awestruck look on your face, like maybe you’d just seen a double rainbow or a bobcat in the wild or a field of yellow blanket flowers, like the lot behind our house before they built the new subdivision. And I realized just now, after all this time, you were looking at me.

It should have been me, not you. Not you, who had so much to give the world.

Lewis thought all children came into the world knowing some truth about magic and God. He thought the journey of adulthood was to forget about these things and then partake in the path to remembering. Lewis said one of the purposes of art was to point people toward what they already knew.

It wasn’t a true disagreement about the age of the tree but, rather, a vehicle to hold hands and explore the wondrous conundrum of having more words to say to the other than there were seconds in the day.

Meanwhile, a chain of genetic material from each of the people Wren most loved swirled within the small being Wren would love most of all.

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.

Instead, she considers how life is like a spiraling trail up a mountain. Each circling lap represents a learning cycle, the same lesson at a slightly higher elevation. Wren realizes she likes to rest as much as she likes to climb. She begins to enjoy the view.