The word for love isn’t lake | Hanne Larsson

You’ve dark rings under your eyes I notice over breakfast, the green flecks in your irises brighter than yesterday, or the day before, or even before then. Like the seaweed forest I once played seal-tag in. Mania lurking, grandmama would call it, and spit thrice. 

I make my eyes glassy and return to my toast, sliding from your stare’s sharpness. Grandmama never met you; I wouldn’t be sat here if she had. 

It’s the same you said. Water is water, you pleaded. I agreed to the move, for you. For love, I forgot what it was to be weightless. 

But the lake is a poor substitute for the sea’s endless whispering. It tells me nothing new. It whines, crying about its prison, dulling my senses. I cannot help that; I didn’t create it. 

The ocean will groan or laugh with me, always. She’s a tease in wet, blue, frothing form, judging when to unhide herself. Much like grandmama.

So I stand here, still, at the lake, waiting for something to change, cocooned in silence. No ripple to ruffle its demeanour till a gale whips the mirror to peaks. 

And I cannot lose my thoughts in such quiet. I demand the unrelenting, paced consistency of each wave. I need the salt-air so that I can be brave enough to plead with you in turn. 

But I lost my voice some time ago. I lost it when you conned me, when you broke your promises, when you held my spirit under, when I stopped flailing and just inhaled the murky stillness. There I am, acting instead as tribute to your love as the lady of the lake.

I became muzzled, the memory of grandmama shaking her head at my choice.

I take another sip of my tea, feel the poor substitute of toast crumbs down my throat instead of my wished-for salt air, feel how your eyes rake over me, worrying about my next move. 

Good. Suffer. 

Because grandmama has started whispering the unbindings in my ear. And the word for love isn’t lake like you claimed.

Hanne (@hannelarsson) is a British Swede who longs for her childhood’s 95% humidity and hawker centre food. Her stories are fed by moss-covered rock-trolls and what-if scenarios.