Midnight Is the Darkest Hour

by Ashley Winstead

It sweats like a person facing the barrel of a gun.

the volume on the world turns back up: gunfire and shouting, roaring at full blast.

Love isn’t salvation; it’s a curse. Feeling so much, wanting so much, not being in control of yourself.

“What am I to you?” The sun is in his eyes; he squints down at the grass. A smile curves his mouth—so sad I would give anything to retract the question. “It’s funny. Since the day I found you in the swamp, I’ve been trying to answer that question. I thought once that you might be the answer to the only prayer I ever made. Or my conscience—my heart, beating outside my body. Sometimes…” He swallows. “I think you’re a fistful of sand, and the tighter I clutch, the faster you spill. I don’t know, Ruth. You’re something I’ve never had a name for.”

Why did we fall in love like lit matches dropped in kerosene?

I was the architect of my own misery.

Sometimes a person was your home, the love you learned to grow for yourself, stored in another’s body.