Where is he?
Angus is in the sky, I tell her in my mind—with the pollen of flowers and the breath of birds, carried by wind around the earth, around again and again, swirling oceans and dusting up storms, flowing through clouds and rain and with all the others—Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Adeline, Seth, and the tiny babies who didn’t make it into this world. All those lost souls, whatever a soul may be.
But then I imagine Mom asking Where is he really?, because Mom is Mom, because she needs to know. What do you believe, Jenna?
I believe that his body is out there somewhere, beneath the glass surface of green. No longer bones—just salt and minerals, the crust of a rock or reef. Food for plants, the silky, swirling algae. He is the metal dust on the bottom, burying the treasures. Or he is on part of some crystalline shore, as some powdery quartz—part of a lonely child’s sand castle, the mortar of some great stone precipice.
Part of me.
And then there is Seth, buried in the earth one hundred miles away, mixing with the soil, fertilizing some growth around him. An experiment he would have loved. It’s sad to think there’s the possibility I won’t be lying next to him there, that my own life is subject to evolve with love—some other love, perhaps even children. But Seth’s soft voice in the wind reminds me it’s okay.
Just a shell, he says.
Mom smiles, as if she can hear me thinking, all these thoughts swirling around. Her hand feels warm and good in mine, protective like a mother’s should against this raw, fertile air. We look out at the swirling, dark green ocean that is alive with fish and shadows and souls, and together wait for spring to turn into summer.
about the author
Sarah Beth Martin began her writing career with a story published in Mostly Maine: A Writer’s Journal. Since then, she has been published in Pearl, West Wind Review, and Animus, among others, and ran the literary journal Foliage. Martin lives in Yarmouth, Maine, and is currently at work on her second novel.
The One True Ocean Page 27