Spells for Forgetting

by Adrienne Young

It was customary to salt the earth where death had been to keep its shadow from spreading.

It was deep magic that ran through the blood of every woman on the island. It seeped into the earth of the orchard, its leaves unfurling every spring, falling to rot every autumn before turning back into the ground.

It had never mattered what was said, because we always returned to each other. Like gravity.

I’d been in love with August Salt since before I knew what the words meant. I don’t know when it happened—the narrow space between seconds, when a spark like the birth of a hundred stars found a home in my blood. Since then, every day had been colored with the glittering light of it dragging me in its wake, pulling me beneath its surface. And I didn’t care. If this was what it was like to drown, then for the rest of my life, I didn’t want to take another sip of air.