Summer of Salt

by Katrina Leno

“I think a person can be a home, sometimes, just as much as a place or a house can.

I knew that he would use that gun, because that is what small, scared men did: they used things more powerful than themselves to make up the difference. They hid behind weapons of mass destruction: big guns and bigger bombs.

Because there was nothing in a girl’s history that might negate her right to choose what happens to her body.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to his empty tomb. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered to all the women who had come before me. And then I left them alone and promised I’d return one day. The dead loved promises; the living loved promising.

On the island of By-the-Sea you could always smell two things: salt and magic.