Nonfiction by Andrea Marcusa

Sometimes when I’m engrossed in a book, the sun streams through the window, and brightens the pages, startling me.  I blink, notice the minute flecks of dust dancing on its beam and the cold January day outside is transformed by a moment of light. 

In the adjacent room, my husband is consumed with his culinary alchemy—sauteing garlic, grating ginger, deftly slicing vegetables for a stir fry. It is during such moments that the depths of my need for him become vividly apparent.  I know we are here for a lifetime, yet our days together feel more fleeting than ever.  It took almost losing him for me to grasp the steep cost of love. 

His voice calls out announcing that lunch will be ready in twenty minutes.  His industry and enthusiasm offer me a comforting sense of security. There’s a gusto and zest about him, a zeal that’s been absent for years, and it fills me with a warmth that’s hard to describe.  I want to drink up every moment of our lives together, savor it like a slow melting sweet lozenge.  But I always feel the other, too, looming, like the relentless ticking of the clock on the wall, that knowledge that any moment our lives together could vanish, like the day the wildfire smoke descended upon us from up north and transformed the sunniest, longest day of the year into a sinister twilight.

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Andrea Marcusa’s writings have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, River Styx, River Teeth, New Flash Fiction Review, Citron Review, and others. She’s received recognition in a range of competitions, including Smokelong, Cleaver, Raleigh Review, New Letters and Southampton Review. She’s a member the faculty at The Writer’s Studio and also a member of the school’s the Master Class where she studies with Philip Schultz. For more information, visit: andreamarcusa.com or see her on Twitter @d_marcusa.