Spells for Forgetting

by Adrienne Young

It wasn’t the first time I’d broken my mother’s heart. It wasn’t the last, either.

I could still see the yellow hickory standing like a sentinel at the top of the hill. It vanished and then reappeared as the fog moved, like a candle flame flickering in the wind before it turned to smoke.

I knew every house like I knew every row of trees in the orchard. I could still walk them in my mind. Sometimes, I did.

The wet, fallen leaves were piled before the entrance to the chapel like seaweed left behind after a storm. Above us, the white steeple reached up into the black sky, but its bell hadn’t rung even once in my lifetime.

It was a moment split down the seams, clumsily stitched closed by fourteen agonizing years.

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 why I hadn’t really been able to see it then—that pain that seemed to live there. He’d done a horrible thing, but I had the feeling that this was the first time I was seeing August Salt clearly.

I’d know her anywhere. Her hands, her frame. I could pick out the sound of her voice in a sea of people if I had to.

I didn’t know if I’d ever really seen him like that. Confused. Uncertain of what to do. In an instant, my uncle looked incredibly fragile, and I didn’t like the feeling it gave me.

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

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.

I opened the back door, following the stone trail through the tangle of climbing roses that lined the walkway. They reached across the path in wandering blooms, glittering with raindrops.

We began the way my grandmother had—with earth, air, fire, and water. Colored stars hung in the window over the dining table, casting a rainbow of light on the floor beside my feet. The window faced east and the moment the sun rose over the buildings downtown, that slice of warm light filled the kitchen of our little apartment.