Things worth keeping

On April 19, 2017, Chile counted itself. It began at eight in the morning; by ten, three quarters of the country was counted. Someone came to your door in the Atacama Region with twenty-one questions: who lives here, how old are you, where were you born, what do you call yourself. You answered. You were in the book of the nation.

Then it rained.

The Atacama is the driest place on Earth. Weeks later it flooded and the forms for 72,000 homes were ruined: sixty percent of the region's people, seventy-two percent of its houses. Your answers, back to pulp.

The detail that undoes me: they printed the form in six languages besides Spanish, Mapudungun among them, so no one would be left out of the count. Then the one place you would never bet on weather washed a region off the record. Not out of cruelty. Just weather. Just bad luck.

The numbers still came out in the end, but a rebuilt percentage is not your answer sheet. Nobody can un-ruin those pages.

I write this because I know what it is to suspect the record is missing you. Not hated. Just not on the page. No one should sit in that quiet alone.

So here it is, in writing, on purpose: you existed. You answered. I'm recording it.

Researched letters. First check free, then $25 by card. [email protected]