Immediately as I ride the rush of wind chills my skin and twines it’s fingers into my chestnut hair, making the waves brush against my shoulders and fly behind me. Over the creekbed trees stretch and barely touch each other, as though passing a secret from one to the next. I strain my ears to hear their whispers through the leaves, but if they speak to me I don’t understand. But that’s okay, let them keep their secrets. I have my own.

I never thought it would be hard to leave. People say it is, but to me it seemed that it was the waiting that was most difficult, the trying to keep alive something precious inside me buried so deep. Staying was killing it off for sure, no matter how hard I tried to keep it beating.

I’ll never see the ocean without thinking of you.” It was the closest thing to I love you too she could come up with. Perhaps it meant the same thing, just said with different words.

Heaven might have streets of gold, but this entire town is covered in it. Amber sunlight is everywhere, glowing off of the yellow brick buildings, reflecting from the windows, even hanging in the dust. Sunlight, apparently, smells like slightly overripe fruit, the kind perfect for the picking, that shouldn’t be left for any other day. It’s meant to be enjoyed now.

Others, however, would look over the children as if they were produce. They’d only speak to the nearest officer, never lowering their eyes to the young ones. Instead, they looked down their noses as though to distance themselves. “I’ll take these,” Helen would see them mouth, waving a finger above the small heads. It was a moment the children would have branded on their minds, Helen was sure of it, and the pain of it turned her stomach to lead.

Watching her with the other children, it struck Helen once again that there was something that still set the girl apart, something just out of reach. Lyric was remarkable. A breathtaking horizon and endless ocean, deep and mysterious. No matter how well Helen got to know her, she always felt as though she never truly would.

I could never do anything that would add to your pain.”With that, he leaned over and placed a kiss on her forehead, soft and sad as moonlight. Helen’s eyelids fluttered down as she relished it, wishing it could last, praying the next moment wouldn’t come. But of course, it did.Pulling back, Stuart looked in Helen’s eyes, perhaps for the last time. “I’ll write.

There are places in this world often believed to be empty, such as old homes or the sea, but the people who believe this are wrong. It is precisely because of what fills these places right up to the brim that we are drawn to them, and it’s for these very same reasons that we fear them.

A flash flood had come into Helen’s life, careening down canyon walls. All that love couldn’t be trapped anymore—it had to find a path or it would destroy her. She knew now that the path didn’t lead to Stuart, but water, like love, is good at finding where it’s meant to be.

How apart she felt, how apart she had felt for years, and she wished it was a feeling she could get used to. But it wasn’t. One by one, everyone else her age had married and had children, yet for her, the years of her twenties had slipped away, waving at her like hands from a leaving train. As they all moved on, she was left standing on the platform, absolutely alone, surrounded only by the smoke that stung her eyes and throat.It was no different now.