Abandoned by the sea.

And perhaps she’d hear it again. The women’s voices, calling to her. That sweet sound of belonging.

even sturdier hips. Childbearing hips, you might call them, if you were cruel.

selfportrait, but really it was him – Hennessey – I wanted to capture. Capture. It’s the perfect word, isn’t it? You paint someone and it’s like you own them, like you’ve taken their soul from their body and put it right there on the canvas.

She was no longer freakish, no longer stunted. Blooming into herself, at last.

Salt on Your Tongue: Women and the Sea,

She had told herself, all those years ago, that she was protecting him by not writing it down. But really, she was protecting herself. She hadn’t wanted to remember.

She felt her spine burst through her dress in spiked fins. Her hands, when she held them to her face, were strangers: her pulse beat in the webbing between her fingers. She remembered now.

She allows herself a burst of pride at the completed painting, as if a part of her already knows it will be a very long time before she holds a brush in her hand again.