Eliza MacArthur

“Come back,” her father had said. She would. For just a moment. Not home to her family, but home to the sea, to feel the cold surf against her skin, the thick, heavy water surrounding her. It would be cold in a way it never had been with her sealskin, but it was better than nothing. Sixty years at most, she’d said while her father had looked at her sadly. A blink, she had said. He had wept. Instead, it had been lifetimes. Lifetimes of struggling and fighting, of fleeing and never knowing how long she’d be able to stay in one place. Never putting down roots. A lifetime of never having a real home, never feeling safe. It had only been in the last fifty years that she’d been able to settle in any kind of comfort or safety.”
― Eliza MacArthur, ‘Til All the Seas Run Dry

“He pulled away an inch, his eyes closed and his nose barely touching hers. “I love you,” he said. “I love you so goddamn much.” Esther gasped and he smiled that half smile of his. It was more of a lift of one corner of his mouth that anything, but it was a smile nonetheless. “Say it again,” she whispered. “I love you, Esther MacLaren. And if you ever leave me again, I will find you. There’s not a place you could run where I wouldn’t catch you. Because you’ve been tied to me since that first day. I don’t know how you did it, but I feel you. Right here.” He pressed a hand to her ribs, just below her beating heart.”
― Eliza MacArthur, Soft Flannel Hank