Sublime

‘over the water’

For Emily, who returned her borrowed stardust to the universe far too soon.

You were old enough, she tells herself, and the words have the rhythm of mantra, something she’s said to herself before. So this doubt has been there, all along.

adagio

mien

lacuna

He could not decide if she was beautiful in spite of her monstrosity, or because of it.

thought this real me was in there, in charge, hidden from them but directing from the undergrowth.

‘I do.’ Horribly it occurred to her that perhaps she wept because in fact she did not want this real Nathan, in his compromised flesh. Was this what she’d waited for? Had she bartered her soul for a gaunt man with a wife and child and a dragging foot?