Thirst for Salt

by Madelaine Lucas

I was looking out at the horizon. At a certain time down south, sea and sky seem to merge, to kiss. Mirroring each other, like lovers do. Above and below, one expanse of silver blue. I’d never known that kind of love—where all boundaries disappeared.

Although we can never really know how we are perceived by others—especially those who come, in time, to love us, those initial impressions overlaid with the knowledge of later intimacies—

What I wanted to know from my mother was how to reconcile the fact that some people never find love. I am sure I said it that way, find, like a miraculous, unintentional discovery, as if love were a stone in the sand. But to be found also implies that something lost has been returned to its place of belonging, and what did I know about love and stones? I was still holding out for a kind of love that felt like homecoming.