Our Wives Under the Sea

by Julia Armfield

To know the ocean, I have always felt, is to recognize the teeth it keeps half-hidden.

I thought about the day it first occurred to me that, should she die, there would be no one in the world I truly loved. You can, I think, love someone a very long time before you realize this, notice it in the way you note a facial flaw, a speech impediment, some imperfection which, once recognized, can never again be unseen.

The woman across from me is tall in a way I’m not used to and worries at the skin of her upper lip so hard that at one point during our conversation she has to pause to press a paper napkin to the center of her mouth.