Spells for Forgetting

by Adrienne Young

It wasn’t just his voice. It was the feel of him that lingered in the air. Like the ghost that had haunted me for so long was finally flesh before me.

I didn’t know that teenagers didn’t usually fall into that kind of love, or that there was anything unusual about us at all. I just knew that she felt like air to me.

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. Since then, every day had been colored with the glittering light of it dragging me in its wake, pulling me beneath its surface. And I didn’t care. 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.

I’d known the moment I saw her standing in the road after I arrived on the island. I’d known it the first time I kissed her. The first time I’d told her that I loved her. I couldn’t be anyone else’s because I was hers. I’d always be hers. If she wasn’t going to say it, then I would.

We’d had no beginning, I realized. We just always were. When I thought about it like that, it was comforting. Like there was no waiting for an end, either.