Thirst for Salt

by Madelaine Lucas

Who is to say what love is or what it wants to be, the shape it takes, or how quickly it comes on? Love has always made a fool of time.

I told him that I’d always been afraid of wanting anything so badly that it becomes visible. For years I’d tried to compress my desires, to burn them away, like waste. I had this theory, I said, that that was why I would never be graceful. My body jarred from the fight of trying to keep it all inside me, it made me clumsy. Desires would rise up and I’d knock an elbow into something, or my hand would give out on the glass I was holding and I would watch it as it slipped through my fingers, shattered.