After the Flood

by Kassandra Montag

couldn’t regret my children, but I also couldn’t be free from them, from the way they had opened me up, left me exposed. I had never felt as vulnerable as I had after birth, nor as strong. It was a greater vulnerability than I ever felt facing death, which only felt like a blank expanse, not like free-falling, which was how I felt every day trying to care for Pearl in this world.

Thomas shrugged. “It raises questions for me. Do all natural things but man conspire toward life, but man alone has a death drive? If life exists to fight disorder, will violence and disorder evolve right alongside us, the shadow that we need to keep breathing? If rage is a reaction to disorder, does that make rage the original life force?” I stared at him. “What I want to know is if things will get worse. I want to keep fishing.” “You fish while you can,” Thomas said gently.

There had been no awkwardness between us after that night in the cabin. Instead what remained was a deeper understanding, like we’d spoken at length after a long silence.

You must become someone you haven’t had to be yet.

Both of us mesmerized by her body, her wanting words for every part and its sensation, and me content to witness life unfold before me. Never real enough anymore in my own body, but in hers, a glorious awakening for each of us. She, my second awakening, my second birth.

am not the shards of a broken glass, but the water let loose from it. The uncontainable thing that will not shatter and stay broken.