The Artful Trade

Protecting the Unprotectable copyright@2019 Will Maguire Many years ago, as a teenage boy, I fell in love with a girl... or perhaps better put, I thought it was love. It was really only the first hopeful version of it. All expectation...long the get and short on give. This was before I knew anything about the sacrifice or selflessness it always demands. Her mother had died young that year of cancer and her death cut a hole in the girl. Her father, a lawyer, believed his faith had been betrayed. So every night he tried to wash his grief away, usually with gin. The hole in the girl grew and then like a torn sweater, she began to unravel. I used to go by her house in the middle of the night, tap on her window and we would whisper thru the screen about how I was going to save her and how she was going to save me. I lived by the sea then and some nights she would sneak out and we would go to the beach. She would lie in my arms sobbing. I tried my best to save her, to protect