Spells for Forgetting

by Adrienne Young

To me, the island had always been a stone tied around my ankles, and everything that could have been was no more than the puddle of light on the surface as I sank.

August had always been the ocean between us. The past that had never let either of us go.

The night of the orchard fire had folded my life into two perfect halves—one colored in amber light, fogged with hot breath in the dark of the woods, the full blood moon hanging in the night sky. And the second, wrought with missing the first.

Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with Emery in a way that I was both too young and too naïve for. I could see that now. But the tangled roots of it were still buried deep beneath the surface of me, and that pain I felt when I saw her standing across the road was still there. It had always been there.

There were so many times when I thought that her existence just felt like an extension of mine. Like this part of me that lived outside of my skin.

“There are spells for breaking and spells for mending. But there are no spells for forgetting,”

There were some things that were a part of you, no matter how badly they hurt.