Migrations

by Charlotte McConaghy

I rest my head on his shoulder; I rest myself in his hands. It seems a safe place to be kept, even to belong. But where does he get to belong? What crueler fate is there than to belong in the arms of a woman who dies each night?

“All of love,” one of the men says, “madness.” “My wife calls it a fever dream,”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’d never leave you for good.” With the words I realize it’s true, and a different kind of binding takes hold, a deeper, more ruinous one.

“But you’re holding me so tenderly,” I say. “Does it feel like a cage?” My eyes prickle. “No,” I say, and I feel that deep and terrible binding for what it is, I know its face and its name, and it’s not a binding at all, but love, and maybe that’s the same kind of thing after all.

I wrap myself about him. If I make of myself a thick enough shell then I will keep him safe; if I fuse myself to his skin, if I am needed, then surely we can’t be parted.

“The stronger you are, the more dangerous the world.”

“Don’t apologize too much, kid. It’ll bleed you dry.”

we are incomprehensibly brief sparks, just as the animals are, that we are no more important than they are, no more worthy of life than any living creature. That in our self-importance, in our search for meaning, we have forgotten how to share the planet that gave us life.

also I think there is meaning, and it lives in nurturing, in making life sweeter for ourselves, and for those around us.