The Light Pirate

by Lily Brooks-Dalton

when she was growing up, her own mother’s defining characteristic was her lack of mother-ness.

matter. The love in this house is finite. Tense. Transactional. There isn’t enough for them, and soon there will be even less. They feel a storm coming, too.

Because the fact is, as hard as he fought to stay, as ashamed as he is to admit it, the idea of leaving has taken root in him. But to demean this place in the process, to judge it as unworthy of himself, of anyone really, is to belittle its land, its inhabitants, its struggle, its history. He doesn’t need Rudder to be not good enough in order to go somewhere else.

If the ocean is a body and the river is a body, then the groundwater is a body, too. The body no one sees. It lies in wait beneath the surface, rising through the cracks and crevices, filtering up and up and up until the limestone above is full and wet. This body sprawls, buried. Sleeping but not. Hidden but not. So deep beneath the earth that it stretches under the ocean floor, so close to the surface that it can tickle the sky when it rains.

The tomcat. Whether he is following her or running from her, she couldn’t say. It’s usually a little of both, and that’s why she and these feral creatures understand each other as well as they do. Yearning and fear, bound together as violently as the wire traps she doesn’t want to set anymore.

Surely the sun is laying its fingers on some other part of the world, but here the night’s grasp is tight and sticky and feels as though it might never let go.

Before, the dissolution of society had felt like a release from a structure that no longer made any sense. There was relief in that, and excitement. But once that final human tether to the outside civilization was cut, isolation crept close. The tides pressed in, rising higher and higher. The sun beat down, shining hotter and hotter. The monotony of their days took on a foreboding as the swamp spread and deepened.

For the first time in a long time, she cries—big, choking sobs—the whole time worrying about her tears. She needs that moisture for other things, she tells herself, this is a waste, an extravagance, a careless use of precious resources. But even so, she cries, and even so, the price of these tears is tangible, exacting, steep.