#caleb winter

on the contrary.  she’d once known happiness as intimately and desperately as a lover, unfaithful though it be.  she’d watched while it traipsed in stockings down hallways, and wrapped its lips around the neck of another.  in the grey hours of dawn, happiness had been hers-- bed-tousled hair before breakfast, rolling eyes in scrawled notes, and the sound of his scowl in her laughter.  but when evening came, it fluttered from her grasp, and into another’s.

but even that was not to last.  soon, as any adulterous beau, the merriment tired of even its most resplendent distractions.  it fled easily from her hands, a slippery salmon, and washed him down the river alongside it.

and at the end of the age, she is left with naught but a sinner’s child and a incurable penchant for alcohol.  the impossible years crawl past her at unsteady rates, seeming to simultaneously drag on and slip by.  the little money she manages to salvage is always short-lived, disappearing in an avalanche of crackers, whiskey, and childrens’ clothes.  the pride that had once been a defining feature has begun to fade, taking the back burner when the survival of her daughter is in a constant peril.

but despite her many losses, and her long list of mistakes, there is one thing she never bothers to regret.

she sends the letters at least once a week, no matter how tight the budget, no matter if she starves.  she pays the post fee with no remorse nor hesitation, and etches each word into the parchment as if it was her own skin, as if it causes her pain.  (and oh, it does.)  each week it’s a new address, some half-hearted guess that’s unlikely to reach its intended destination.  he could be anywhere, and she’s tried every reasonable place she could think of-- nearly the whole of britain, and even a few other cities scattered across europe.

nothing.  he may as well be dead.  maybe he is.

still, she writes, and she waits, every week without fail.  she watches for that owl, aching to see that morning scribble once more.  but in all five years (all five goddamned years), there has never been any reply.