Everything reminds me of Minnesota now. The sky, the water, the gold veined pocket of leaves during sunset. I walked past a house with windows like the homes alongside Lake Harriet, the large and lonely mansions made of cherry wood and marble stone, with space for light to seep through the cracks. The only time I can write lately is nighttime, when I’m too tired to think about what I’m writing. I’m not self-conscious. Because it is silent, save for the thrumming of air conditioners, the needle prick in your eardrums of quiet, or the random car rushing through the streets like wind. If I’m still enough, I can hear the water. I know it’s not the water, but if I slip into a kind of dream, I can pretend.

In a week, I’ll be home again, and in one of the dearest places I call mine. The water - the lake - will be a stone’s throw away. I will taste the lake in the air, see it in watery light against the wood walls when I wake. “For who can see a stones throw of ought thing in land or plain?” In plain: we will make pancakes for breakfast and walk around white from sunscreen. We will go to bed with sand on our feet, in our hair, etched into our skin. We will play games with ads grown soft under our fingers from years of slapping, we will see who will jump off the dock first. We, my siblings and I. I haven’t seen them for six months now and they’ve freckled and grown lean and lanky in my absence.

Absence, to be away from. Not much longer. I will scoop them in my arms and pretend they still fit in the crook of my elbows, against the hollow of my collarbones.