From Sand and Ash

by Amy Harmon

“I’m starting to think God is the only reason any of us are still alive.”

Life is hell shot with just enough heaven to make the pains of hope all the sharper. Life is impossible. Ugly. Agonizing. Inexplicable. Torture.”

She thought of freedom and sunshine, of love and hope, and she longed for the days of sand and sea, when Babbo had made glass and life had been simple. Sand and ash. The ingredients of glass. Such beauty created from nothing. It had been something Babbo had marveled about and something she’d never understood. From sand and ash, rebirth. From sand and ash, new life. With every song and with every prayer, with every small rebellion, Eva felt reborn, renewed, and she vowed to press on. She vowed to push back, to make glass from the ashes, and that courage was a victory in itself.

We are all products of the places we are raised, the people who love us or have power over us, and the things we hear, over and over again, as we grow.

She was the only thing in the world he really wanted. And not in the way most men want women. He didn’t want to assuage a need. He didn’t want to lose himself temporarily in her body. He wanted to live for her. Beyond the moment, beyond the war. Always.

Fear is strange. It settles on chests and seeps through skin, through layers of tissue, muscle, and bone, and collects in a soul-size black hole, sucking the joy out of life, the pleasure, the beauty. But not the hope. Somehow, the hope is the only thing resistant to the fear, and it is that hope that makes the next breath possible, the next step, the next tiny act of rebellion, even if that rebellion is simply staying

alive.

I see you trembling there. How much it cost you, loving me. How much it cost you, loving me.

Love often had a terrible cost.

“He would tell me to pray. If Angelo were here, he would pray,” she supplied immediately.

He knew it was only a matter of time. God would not be quiet forever.

Love had not made them poor. Love had made them wealthy. In that moment, they were royalty, a king of fortune and a queen of destiny, embracing a tiny prince of peace.