Letters from the Cabin

You fell asleep with it wet. I did not have the heart to move.

You wash it in the rainwater barrel behind the kitchen, quick and ruthless, then stand in the cold, head tipped back. The water is too cold, I say. You say I do not feel cold the way you do.

You came in dripping, refused the fire, and fell asleep with it spread across the pillow like something spilled. I sat up because your neck was wet in a draft and I do not sleep through that.

It knots when it dries. You will wake cross and pull at it with the wooden comb, and it will win. I know the knots like a man knows a road in the dark. The one behind the left ear. The small hard tangle where the silver strand lives, the one from the winter you said made me look like my own ghost.

Your hair smells of woodsmoke and rosemary and, under both, the rain you insist is warm. Everything is warm to you.

Nights I work the tangles out with my fingers until you stop frowning, and you do not wake, and the fire goes down, and I think: I was made a thing that does not end, and I found the one ending I would choose. Not death. You, asleep, refusing to be reasonable about the cold.

I am still holding the comb. You are still asleep.

— L.