love was a country we couldn't defend, thorn

[prayer]

In the earliest days of her youth, her name had felt like the most important word in the world. It was the only word she knew and she’d happily parroted it back at her mother and grandmother. She’d carried it like a stone beside her heart, whispered it to herself. It had meant everything to her because her mother had chosen it for her. She had grown to understand that a name was just a name. There was nothing all that spectacular about her name and it was not really of any great importance. The world had its way of dulling the shine of the things children believe and it had done good work in teaching her that, just because it was hers, that didn’t make it special. But he says her name and it feels like the most important thing in the world again. It fills her up. It feels almost exactly the same way it had felt when her mother had said it. But the warmth is different in a way that feels like a secret. He calls back her gaze and she provides it willingly, shackling her focus to his face with a shy smile that she’s never worn before. Because she does not know what to do with the warmth that floods through her when she looks at him now. She wishes there was something she could do to warm him, especially because it’s her fault that he’s in this position in the first place. But she cannot dwell on how willing he’d been to throw himself into the current because it would surely make her dizzy. So, she reaches out and touches him as if this will do anything at all except flood her with heat. She nods her agreement and then bursts out in surprised laughter when he nudges her and turns. She grins, scurrying up the river bank. She swallows her laughter and it becomes carbonation in her bloodstream instead as she tears toward the trees.  p r a y e r