Spells for Forgetting

by Adrienne Young

The people of Saoirse hated the seasonal tourists almost as much as they needed them,

As a New Englander, same

I fell in love with Emery in a way that I was both too young and too naïve for. I could see that now. But the tangled roots of it were still buried deep beneath the surface of me,

I pressed a kiss to her throat as she looked up at the moon. Her face was washed white with it, and she whispered, “Swear that you’ll love me forever.”

Her hands moved down my back as she kissed me and I had the same feeling I had each time we stood at the top of the cliffs at Wilke’s Pointe. Like I could feel in every cell of my body the distance I was about to fall.

This was why I hadn’t been able to do it—cut the bind before my grandmother’s fire. It would have been like opening my veins.

I’d been in love with August Salt since before I knew what the words meant. I don’t know when it happened—the narrow space between seconds, when a spark like the birth of a hundred stars found a home in my blood.

If this was what it was like to drown, then for the rest of my life, I didn’t want to take another sip of air.

She smelled like sun and the drying herbs that hung in the tea shop. She felt like home.