Thirst for Salt

by Madelaine Lucas

Though maybe it was a female thing, I thought later, to feel vulnerability where a man might have felt power,

When I woke in the mornings, I saw his boots kicked off by the foot of the bed, and that looked like love. All around me, I could smell the sea.

THERE MUST BE PEOPLE out there who are not drawn to the shadow of what could have been, who feel no pull toward the other lives they could be living, but I certainly have never been one of them.