Thirst for Salt

by Madelaine Lucas

It’s not so easy, I’d tried on one occasion to explain, to tell what keeps people together, what makes them fall apart. You can leave someone and still love them. You can lie with someone and never love them at all.

It is easy, I have learned, to mistake solitude for softness, for depth.

think now that this is something that happens in small families—roles get confused, relationships do double duty. So a daughter might play the part of an overprotective parent, or a mother might rely on the daughter like a partner. Mother as runaway child, daughter as mother, daughter as husband.

But it’s grief, really, that is love’s twin, that knows no bounds of time or space.