Migrations

by Charlotte McConaghy

In their own private ways they are all grieving the end of this life, knowing it must come to an end, not knowing how they’ll survive that.

He doesn’t look at me but my eyes are pulled to him as if by gravity, or perhaps something less scientific, something for which I don’t yet have a name.

We watch the sea, waiting for land and wishing we never had to reach it.

A golden setting sun streaks the sky pink, the ocean metallic. I bury my feet and hands, feeling the coarse grains against my skin, and I beg myself to live inside this evening, but I am a million miles away.

“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.