Fishwidow

By the time the men have left and the sorry son is put to bed, the last of what holds her steady is gone.

To crawl into bed with her love, snuff out the lamp as though it were any other night, would be a treasure only Death could plunder from her. He has, in the most wretched of ways.

Graff’s body lies cold in the back room. The waves that cradled him to shore lap at the pebbles outside, roll them over and over in innocence. They are a puppy who does not know he’s done wrong. The intention was never to harm.

But the damage is done. The Fishwidow will never smile again.

The village eld sits and holds her hand as the sun slips under the sea. There are depths deeper to the elder’s sunken eyes, to kindly wrinkles webbing her face. The suns of many sails linger as history in the freckles, in the tan of her once light, fair skin. Luli has lost three husbands to the sea; she remembers her first was the worst.

When the first fissure fractures the Fishwidow’s façade, Luli grunts an old tune in her throat.

Luli knows to mourn is to do many things; the acts are sundry and vary. One may cry, garden, live life with no difference, sing or throw themselves about in despair. When her second husband was dragged onto the beach, Luli baked a pie. For the third, she sat on the cliffs for a month in the rain and remembered wanting to throw herself off after the first.

It doesn’t ever get better, only easier. Healing comes with a wisdom that life is to be cherished for as long as you know it.

Rain hurls itself at the tin roof. It drips into a bucket by the south wall.

The Fishwidow is looking into a world outside of the one she lives in. She has never been there before and is lost. Luli gently squeezes her hand. Such is the life of a fisherman’s wife, to depend on and fear the deep water. There is no escape from its swell. When the Fishwidow rises and pads softly from the room, the eld makes no move to stop her.

Graff’s body is laid out on a table, still damp from the saltwater sprays. His yellow jacket glows wetly under the light of a sputtering lamp. The jacket is the last vessel to have held his spirit safe, until it could do no more beyond cling. Dried blood draws a line from his temples to his ear.

The Fishwidow slowly, achingly, pulls down the zipper of his jacket. She lays a hand on his chest. The bun of light hair atop her skin is askew, falls in strands by her cheeks and shakes with her as the broad ribcage below remains still.

Strange, how a body without life is just… a body.

She cradles one large hand between both of hers.

What made it Graff is nothing, no more. The light in his eyes, the twitch of his beard, the calm, steady breaths and his heart. The Fishwidow smooths the wet hair back from his forehead and stares. She bends to him, presses her lips softly to his. She breathes what is left of him in and the smell will haunt and hold her forever.

Lifting her skirts, the Fishwidow climbs onto the table beside him. She lifts his arm and crawls into the space made between it, presses her life-filled face into the world between shoulder and cheek.

One more night.

The heartbroken Fishwidow reaches out to the dying lamp.