Thirst for Salt

by Madelaine Lucas

I needed to hear it, the reassurance of those words. Repeating it to him over and over that winter, IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou, like a prayer. Sometimes I would keep myself awake after Jude had fallen asleep to look at his face, missing him even in sleep. So sure, in these moments, that if he ever tried to leave me, I wouldn’t let him. Undignified, the scene I’d make. Not too proud to beg. I’d wrap myself around his legs the way I used to hang from my father’s when I was a child and he would come to visit—remembering the way he used to play along, swinging me from his boot with each heavy stride. I wanted us to be like rocks or anchors, keeping each other in place. Love, I’d read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity.