Beyond That, the Sea

by Laura Spence-Ash

The present’s hardly there; the future doesn’t exist. Only love matters in the bits and pieces of a person’s life.

When they were on the island, though, she was the one who was small; it was her whole world. It was as though nowhere else existed.

She’s learned that everyone wears a mask.

It’s fear, made real. Before the declaration of war, it looms over everything, a heavy weight, a constant worry. But once your country is at war, it’s a concrete thing that bores its way in, that never leaves.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Don’t call here again,” and the phone was slammed down in his ear, and in spite of everything, William smiled.

They smiled at each other then, for the first time. “You,” she said. “You,” he replied.

How sweet that moment is, that moment of before. When anticipation is everything. When everything is new. When there are no consequences, when there is no after.

Some secrets are weights to be borne. Others are gifts, little bits of warmth, to be revisited again and again. No one else ever needed to know. No one else had the right to know. It was theirs and theirs alone.

I can never decide. Is it better or worse when the world looks like this? Does it mitigate the loss when the world is so insistent on being beautiful?

No, but somehow it does help.

I just wanted—we all just wanted—you to be happy, she says out loud, talking up to the blue sky. Why is that difficult for so many people to achieve?

When you look back, it’s so easy to see the path that you’ve traveled. But looking forward, there are only dreams and fears.

We love people for all sorts of different reasons and in all sorts of different ways, she says. Remember that. And it only gets better, the older you get. Young love isn’t necessarily the best love.

Let’s take a walk, she says. Let’s take a walk together.

She brought a sign as a housewarming gift, a line from Shakespeare: WHAT’S PAST IS PROLOGUE.