After the Flood

by Kassandra Montag

I 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.

Paying such close attention turned my mind inside out, flayed my nerves.

“But you have to risk idealism to have hope.”

I knew it was sometimes easier to love ghosts than the people who were around you. Ghosts could be perfect, frozen beyond time, beyond reality, the crystal form they’d never been before, the person you needed them to be.

I saw myself in my ocean grave, underwater light bluing my skin, my hair floating like seaweed, coral sprouting from my bones. A new thing in a new world.

I was weary of all of it; weary of the choices, the responsibilities. For a moment, I wanted to disappear into the deep and float into oblivion.