Letters from the Cabin

You came back from the village and told me Marit was dead. You said it the way you say rain. I did the sum before I could stop myself.

That is the thing about your kind. You say a death like weather, and I hear a clock. You will get maybe forty more winters. I have been alive long enough to know what forty is. It is a morning.

You watched me do it. You always watch me do it. Then you put the basket down and started the fire, and I stood in the doorway with my hands in my sleeves, like a man at a grave he is not entitled to.

What I never said: I do not want the years back. I want them here. On this floor. Your boots by the door, your tea going cold because you talk with your hands. I would trade every century I have for one more evening of you explaining something I already know.

So here is the promise, since you will not ask for one. You will grow old in this cabin, and I will carry the water when your back stops forgiving you. Then the forest keeps you, and I keep this room exactly as you left it. And I will not follow. Not because I do not want to. Because you would count it as waste.

You called me in from the rain once. I am not going back out.

— L.