From the Inside

She was not gone.

This was the part that had no word.

She was not gone in the way a person was gone when they died.

She was not gone in the way a person was gone when they left a place.

She was still here.

She could see the settlement around her.

She could feel the weight of the stirring spoon in her hand.

She could feel the morning air.

What she could not do — what had changed, slowly, over months, in a way she had not noticed until the noticing itself became difficult — was find the part of her that knew why any of this mattered.

The pot was empty.

She had stirred it many times since it became empty.

She had stirred it because stirring was something she did with a spoon and a pot.

Not because the stirring was going somewhere.

Not because she was waiting for the broth to be ready.

Because she was here and the pot was here and the spoon was here.

She was not gone.

She was very far away.

She could remember being different.

Not as a vivid memory.

The way you remembered a smell from a long time ago: the fact of it present, the details faded.

She remembered: there had been a reason for things.

The broth had been for someone.

The pot had been part of a morning that was going somewhere.

She had cared whether the broth was ready on time.

She could remember that she had cared.

She could not find the caring.

Not because it had been taken from her.

She did not know how to explain the difference between taken and gone.

It was like asking the difference between a fire that someone had put out and a fire that had simply run out of what it needed to burn.

She had run out.

She was still here.

Still standing.

Still holding the spoon.

Still breathing.

Very far away from everything that had made the breathing matter.

There had been a woman who came.

The woman had pressed her palms to things.

She had asked questions.

The questions had arrived from a great distance.

She had found the answers from a great distance.

She did not remember what the answers were now.

She remembered: someone had come.

Someone had pressed her palms to the walls and stayed there for a long time.

Something in the walls had been different when the woman was pressing them.

Not much different.

She could not have said what.

Something had been — here.

When the woman was pressing the walls.

Something had been here that was not usually here.

And then the woman had left.

And the walls had gone back to what they were.

And she had stirred the pot.

Then the man came.

At the fourth bell of the morning.

He was different from the woman.

Not in the way she would have been able to describe to anyone.

From the distance she was in, everything arrived with a certain contour.

People arriving had the quality of: something approaching.

This man had the quality of: something arriving that had already been here.

She could not explain the difference.

It was the first distinction she had made in weeks.

He walked through the settlement.

He pressed his palms to the walls.

He stayed at each one longer than the woman had stayed.

Much longer.

She stood at the common house door.

She watched him.

Not because she was curious.

Not because she had chosen to watch.

Because something in her had oriented toward him.

Without her doing it.

Something in her that was still present at a depth she could not feel.

Had oriented.

He pressed his palm to the wall beside her.

He stayed.

A long time.

Something moved in the wall.

Not the wall itself.

Something in what the wall was holding.

She could feel it.

From the great distance she was in.

She could feel something.

Not a restoration.

Not the feeling of a channel receiving direction.

Something different.

The knowledge that she was not alone.

Not in the way of another person standing beside her.

In the way of: something was present in the absence with her.

Something that had not turned away.

She stood at the door.

She held the spoon.

She received what the wall received.

From the great distance.

Dimly.

Incompletely.

But present.

He walked away.

She stood at the door.

The wall beside her held what it held.

Not more than before.

The same.

But the something that had been present was still present.

Not in the wall.

Not in the man who had walked away.

In the absence.

She did not know what it was.

She could not reach the knowing from the distance she was in.

But it was there.

In the absence.

She lowered the spoon.

She set it on the edge of the empty pot.

She had not set the spoon down in a long time.

She did not know how long.

She did not know why she had set it down now.

She sat down.

She sat in the doorway of the common house.

From the great distance she was in, something very small had changed.

Not the distance.

Not the absence.

The knowledge that something was present in it.

She sat.

The settlement breathed around her.

The goat at its post.

The fires at their level.

The spoon on the edge of the pot.

She sat.

From the great distance.

Something in the absence receiving her.

Still.