Fracture Lines

by Karen Baumgart

The four of them had been friends-as-couples for over twenty years. There was a breezy freedom to it, forged over countless coffee catchups and post-church chats. If Sarah was completely honest with herself, she had always shared with her friend’s husband a gentle connection; nothing felt forced or shallow. He was her safe person, content to sit alongside her festering, long-ago trauma without trying to fix her. An infinite source of literary distractions and warm encouragement. Shh. Focus on this moment, this poem, this quote.

Like air, the evolution of their easy friendship went unnoticed, even to them, even as it unfurled new shoots and fresh fronds, fearlessly drawing them closer

when her old demons returned

when his long marriage ended suddenly

when her husband could no longer hear her

when she began to feel stupid, and small.

And isn’t that how these things unfold, subtly reframing the firm foundation upon which a life is built, before it fractures? The final act, playing out on an unfamiliar stage, lit only by the soft fizz of a flickering candle. Shh. Focus on this moment, this poem, this quote.

A fragile shift as she entered his apartment, finally seeing how they had formed a filigree web of poetry and compassion and hope. Time shuddering slowly to a halt, a standstill. A backdrop of tangled fairy lights. An unspoken agreement that nothing could happen between them. And, underneath it all, the shocking fault lines silently running in parallel to this very moment.

Shh. Don’t say it. Shh.

Of course, something can be real even if it remains unnamed, which is how Sarah came to be in the car with her husband two weeks later, murmuring soft sentences that would alter everything. I still love you. I don’t want to leave. We’d fallen in love before we even realised.

Like loss, love will swell to fill myriad empty spaces, melting and pooling in the darkness. In the end, it is a slow remodelling, languidly warming the hollow longing for the parts we miss the most. In the end, the lost pieces serve to illuminate what remains. In the end, Sarah would simply hold the messiness of it all, marvelling at how impossible it had seemed, and how she’d found light in the most unlikely places.