Our Wives Under the Sea

by Julia Armfield

Passingly, I think that this might always have been inevitable, that perhaps she had always known it but had wanted to hold on for me, for as long as she could. I can see it now, the way her chest begins to frill, the upward swell and tremor of the skin that registers its natural habitat, growing first translucent, then entirely clear. I can feel, as well, the way the body I am holding is becoming less a body, the way she slides between my fingers—first my Leah, then the water, first my Leah’s arms, her chest, her rib cage, then the water they are struggling toward. I think of nothing, then I think about the sea lung, the day on the beach with Leah where the ice sat on the water and the air around us seemed about to take some other form. This alchemist sea, changing something into something else. I think of this and I look at her face, the remains of her face, my Leah. She is looking at me—this now, the last of her—and she is still looking at me when I move my arms to release her, when she melts between my hands and into water, twisting down into the rolling tide. What persists after this is only air and water and me between them, not quite either and with one foot straining for the sand.