She writes in Spanish to someone she knew, but she never knew him very well at all. At her side are a list of words that are supposed to mean what she wants to say, along with a picture of the last time she saw him and a Coleman lamp. I am far away, she writes, importantly. All over the village lamps are coming on, people turn up their evening mentality and light themselves, they shine around car games and food.

Actually, I am not so far away, she writes. I am extremely close.

Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stiched with its color.

A gem of a 3 line poem. Fantastic!! For MOM.

The actual contours of our topography — inward and outward — are hidden. But here, from my niche in the amphitheater wall, I looked out on a barren coast that was all richness, where everything was revealed, everything was measured in immensities and scintillas. Walking, I imagined that cells roamed freely here, if they could do such a thing. That's how much space there was. The uninhabited islands across the fjord were not coveted by anyone. They were mine to explore, camp on, hunt from — or anyone's. And whatever happened there, it would, at some later date, be taken away by the advance of the glacier.