Laura Nowlin

We hear that hardly anyone ever goes to the Spring Fling, so we decide that it must be cool and that we will go.

If in the future we separate, it will look so simple on the outside, a falling away, a slipping of ties. And on the inside, we will be ripped and shredded, torn as the bonds that hold us are pulled away.

We grew apart, we will say. It was an accident.

This is friendship, and it is love, but I already know what they have not learned yet; how dangerous friendship is, how damaging love can be.

And I’ve learned that if I try to warn anyone, they laugh.

They don’t see that her tension and perfection are the only things holding her together.

Finny and I loved to hear the story of how they met because it was never the same.

My mother has her head in her arms on the table. Aunt Angelina strokes her hair.

They’ve loved each other nearly their whole lives, yet are not in love.

Angelina’s strength and my mother’s will.

I imagine Angelina’s fingers twine in her hair and rest there.

“I love you,” she says. She always will.