big history. Why
we find familiars is not the high felt cap, rose and black, I
soon wished
you’d bring for me. Is not the hundred wheels of rye bread
thread on ceiling
poles for our first year. Is not the smoke sauna where you
soon said you
would like to scrub my back. Is not the unearthed food:
turnips, beets and
tubers. Dark meat for a nine month winter. Is not the loom
and rugs, a cow
and flax linen—the dark dowry I would have had to bring.
Is not the black
pots, heavy as the iron age, vowels simmering in porridge,
our icons wincing
in the corner when their twenty minute flamesticks died: a
pole of skeletal
light yours and mine really lived. Is not my name, which
means burnt over
field sown with grain, and yours, which means nothing but
water. Is not my
lifelong love of licorice in all its shapes, and the pocket of
your friendly coat
filled with the nibbles you offered as a way to talk to me, a
stranger, on the open
air ferry. Is not more than you soon lifting my sticky hand,
a leaf still on the
tree, lifting my familiar hand, chanting Dear, Dear.