The Wicked Deep

by Shea Ernshaw

“No thinking, just doing. When you think about things too long, you just talk yourself out of them.”

I have this sense that someday we won’t even remember why we were friends in the first place. She will float away like a brightly colored bird living in the wrong part of the world, and I will stay behind, gray-feathered and sodden and wingless.

“Once a Swan sister has whispered into your ear, promised the touch of her skin, you can’t resist her. She will lure you into the water then pull you under until the life spills out of you.”

Perhaps we all have some oddity, some strangeness we keep hidden along our edges, things we see that we can’t explain,

things we wish for, things we run from.

“There’re always reasons to stay,” he says. “You just need to find one reason to leave.”

Love is an enchantress—devious and wild. It sneaks up behind you, soft and gentle and quiet, just before it slits your throat.

I might love him. And it has tilted my universe off center, the frayed edges of my life starting to unravel. Loving someone is dangerous. It gives you something to lose.

But magic was not always so linear. It was born from odium. From love. From revenge.

If only love were so easily conjured, there wouldn’t be so many broken hearts,

“I told you that love is like falling, like drowning. This will be the same. I just have to let go.” My lips quiver. “Don’t forget me.”