Dear A—,
The leaves are dry again. I stepped outside to pick some mint for dessert—the stars were out, the skies were clear—and I heard rustling in the forest. I thought of the owl we have been seeing during the day, a symbol for both death and rebirth, and the black snake that slid away from us in the woods like a slash of black paint. The leaves and then, of course, the heaps in our yard of shingles and warped wood, ripped from our roof, and a wheel barrow—empty.
The rains of course came, last night, between the hours of eight and eleven; our false sense of security in things led us to rip up half our roof that day beforehand in process of replacing it and to leave it as it was over night, with nothing but tarps screwed tediously into exposed rafters and insulation. It is this A— that I write you, how the water poured down our walls, our stone chimney like a water feature, the wood beams that funneled water into a trashcan that we set and had to empty before the storm was through. It is this image, A—, that I think has been with me and the oddness of waking up to see no stains upon the drywall, no towels left soaking, no buckets sitting about the floor, but that someone had already been up, silently, and cleaned house while I was still sleeping.
A—, I wonder if you ever wonder about things—that sense of security when a storm comes beating at your roof, and you sit in the glow of a lamp, intent upon a book, and you know that houses are impermeable and you have nothing to worry about, and God, how beautiful is that storm and the sound that it makes coming down as if it was doing the only thing that it could do with all of its intent. And you think what an eggshell humans have created: a house! And yet, now you must think: but how few holes make it a disaster.
