She wanted to answer the question.
The question hung in the salt air, simple and devastating.
“That’s a coward’s desire,” she whispered to the gulls. But the gulls only screamed and wheeled away. -18 - Q -Desire-
Not a thing to possess. Not an absence to become.
“Right now,” she said, “I want to walk you back down the path so your mother doesn’t worry.” She wanted to answer the question
That, she realized, was desire enough.
She sat on a flat stone and waited. For what, she didn’t know. Perhaps for the tide to rise high enough to kiss her boots. Perhaps for the answer she’d never found in books. But the gulls only screamed and wheeled away
To stand on the cliff and feel the wind pass through her like a hollow bone. To be emptied of longing. To look at the churning sea and see only water, not a metaphor for her own unrest.