Our Wives Under the Sea

by Julia Armfield

I take the thickest book I can find from the shelf and carry it back to the coffee table, pull a slip of paper from my own handbag, and hold it up for a moment before sliding it between the very last page of the book and the back cover. Then I allow the whole heavy weight of the three hundred or so preceding pages plus front cover to fall shut. The slip of paper sticks out between the final page and back cover like a bookmark and I think of how I felt on the viewing deck years ago, when she left not for this last trip but for another, the thing I wished I’d said louder: I’m not sure a ship like that can take the whole of the ocean on top of it, I’m not sure they can all go down that deep and not be crushed. “This is how I imagine it,” I say and watch as Leah’s eyes travel slowly from the therapist to rest upon the book with the little strip of paper crushed beneath the weight of its pages.