Letters from the Cabin

Morning came slow through the cabin windows, and I was still there.

I should have gone at dawn. Every instinct I owned said go: healed enough, dangerous to her, paths everywhere. I stayed. I told myself it was the wound. It was not the wound. It was your hands.

You worked the whole first day. I watched them the way I had watched the light move over the ferns. The kettle. The bandages. The mortar, the patient grind of herbs. Your hands did not tremble once, and they had every right to. I have seen steadier hands on surgeons with far less cause to shake.

At dusk you changed the dressing without asking me to hold still. I held still anyway. Your thumb pressed the poultice in flat and sure, the way you press a seed into earth. I was learning the shape of you the way you learn the shape of a room in the dark.

Here is what I could not say then: I had nothing to offer you. A wounded thing, a hunger, a name I had stopped using. I watched your hands all that first day to learn what a useful creature looks like, so I could become one.

You never asked why I stayed. That was the first gift: the question you chose not to ask. I have been paying it back ever since.

— L.

Letters from the Cabin, No. 2. If you have words you cannot send to someone, tell me who they are and what the thing is. First lines are free: [email protected]