Puzzle Pieces

By Helga Lockheart

We used to speak the same language, not words, but something beneath them:a glance, a breath, a silence that knew how to hold us. Then the tide came. It pulled you out, salt-fingered and sudden. I reached in, dragged you back from the sea but what washed ashore was not you anymore. You had forgotten our language. Each word once tender, now foreign on your tongue. I tried to learn the dialect of your distance, read between the silences, and decode the shift in your eyes. But puzzle pieces, once perfect, had cracked and warped in the water. We pressed ourselves together, tried to click like before. But the edges bled. The shape was wrong. We don't fit anymore.

By Helga Lockheart