The Borders in Our Veins

2

Before I got to bed, I walk the dogs under the starlight. I used to cry to hear them howling on their chains, let out only when the house needed guarding. Like a tool, not a being. And Uncle Luko said if you care too much about creation you're not caring enough about the creator - too much care for this world means not enough care about the afterlife. Sin sin sin sin sin. But since I was a child, I knew an irrefutable truth could be found looking in an animal's eyes. And I don't care much about this side of the war or that one. Who says what and where. What god says and the priest says and what's right and wrong and what words we can say or can't and what we can do or eat or think or dream. I don't know right from wrong so much it gives me a headache to think about any of it. Like my brain is squiggling around in endless suffocating loops.

It gives me a headache to think about anything except how the bees rest on the flowers when I pick cherries in the morning glade. How the goat leans against my touch before I milk her. How the children smile when I hum and laugh at my stories I improvise and weave before I tuck them in. And at night, when I'm sure everyone in the main house is asleep and the lights flickered off, how the dogs wait for me with gratitude - with their big eyes that channel right to their souls, and I think... this is right, this has to be right. No squiggling of thought can pull me away from knowing that. And so I hook their leashes on and release them from their pens, and we run down the paths. We lay down in the glade under the cherry tree and count the stars and I'm alone and I'm okay.

But tonight I'm itching to get back to my shed. I'm itching to light my fire and open this window as big as a sheet of paper I've just been given. "I know, guys," the dogs groan as I stand up. "I know guys, we can have a longer run tomorrow I promise."

We walk around the tangle of brush that separates my glade from the main property, that keeps it out of eye's sight. And right up to the right, cresting the property's highest hill, is the barn. I stumble there in a darkness my footsteps have memorized the shape of so I can let the dogs back in and check their waters and give them one last pat on the head. I check into the goat's pen too and tell her and her new wave of kids that I'll be there in the morning right when the rooster crows to milk her. The chickens chirp as I walk by and the ground is so muddy that my feet make a squishing sound along the path. The most dangerous part of this whole tour is if any other residents - my aunt and uncle's circle of monastery friends - who live in their own hand-crafted sheds like mine, get up to use the compost toilet in the middle of the night.

I tiptoe past the outhouse and the row of sheds, to find mine far at the back. The first one my aunt and uncle built, we all built together, when I first arrived. Straw for the insulation, clay for the walls. Some cracks in its shoddy design, a slit in the shingle where the rain drips in. But I have a bed, and I have a wood stove, and a pale of water, and mostly (most importantly) I'm alone. I already gathered enough wood from the chopped pile this evening to last me hours. I light my fire and dig hungrily under the sheets for where I've hidden the envelopes.

The first one... a zap of electricity goes through my fingers. I kiss it. "You have no idea how alone I've been," I whisper to its blank white face. Stamped, with only Anastasia and my old address on it. I trace my finger along the curves of my address. Blinking back tears. It is good to know my home still exists, isn't bombed or broken, even if it's empty and echoes of the ghost of a childhood I can't reach again. The crackle of the wood stove warms my bones and finally flickers tall enough to read properly. I take a deep breath. "My Ahmed..."

The paper is filled with his signature perfect cursive that always made me feel like he was straight out of the 1800s. He never did anything without it being perfect and proper and embellished and right. Even his penmanship is so full of him I could cry.

"Sia," it begins.

"I suppose it wouldn't mean much to say I've missed you every day. And I wouldn't blame you for not believing it. I think about the last time I saw you and I know you'll say I didn't, but I hurt you. It doesn't matter if it was a whole country trickled down through my parents' throat pushing my hand, because at the end of the day I had to look you in the eyes and leave you, and I won't soon forget your eyes when you said goodbye. I've thought of reaching out to you so, so many times - but I am not sure (we can never be sure) who is tracking our phone communication and why. I cannot put you or my family in trouble. Do you understand? I hope you understand. Maybe I still am.

Maybe I shouldn't be so bold with my pen. But the truth is I'm afraid, Sia. I'm writing each letter as if it were the last I ever write. I'm so afraid and I sit down with myself and realize there's still, after so many years, only one person I want to say all of this to, and one person who I will confidently say I'm glad I've used my last words on.

I am afraid, but mostly I am angry, Sia. After all of this, after trying to leave and be safer here, do you know what happened? My dad had been struggling to make ends meet since we moved here, working odds and ends. Finally he got a new job, a real stable one, out in the forest doing some logging. (Oh yes, we have moved to the mountainside, you'd love it. I always think about you if you were here, taking your shoes off and running into the creek or running down the hills, they're so green, and in my mind you look so free). My dad was finally going to bring something stable home, we could stop eating beans and cabbage and bread. My little sister was going to get a doll or something (I tried to make one out of some corn husks, you would have done such a better job). We were so excited. And day one - day fucking one, Sia - he and his logging crew are clearing a new patch of cedar when their truck rolls over a landmine. Kills them all. Blows them to bits.

This landmine, this fucking landmine, was leftover from the war he survived. Imagine surviving a war in your youth and growing older just to be killed by its souvenirs? There are so many fucking landmines all over this country, Sia. Especially in the forests, trying to stop people from crossing the border back then. He knew it was dangerous, he knew it was a risk, but that's how desperate we are.

I sometimes want to go back home, Sia. To go back to our city. But it's not there anymore, I know that - at least not how it was. There is nothing to go back to; it isn't there anymore, only inside of us in our memories. I cannot think about that too much or I feel like I'm falling through the floor. Everything is leaving me in pieces. Bit by bit. Sia, do you remember we wanted to go to school? We were going to be doctors or something. I don't know if we would have been, what do you think? All I know is I'm glad we skipped so many classes. I remember nothing I learned in school and none of it matters now, but I'll hold with me always in my pocket, right beside my heart, each and every afternoon we spent running down the streets and exploring through the ruins. Do you remember the rooftop? Do you remember sitting on the wall of the old castle? Do you remember that time we threw bread into the river and watched the swans? I remember every single one.

I might live here but sometimes I think I left my heart back there. I am saying too much, I know, but when things are slipping away piece by piece it loosens your tongue. I don't know if the memories are as warm and green for you as they are for me. I hope your life isn't so grey that you need them in your pocket too. I hope they haven't gotten you, too. I don't just mean that I hope you're alive, which I do, but also that you don't regret... that you... I don't know, that you're still you. I know you're still you. But I worry sometimes because I don't know what it's like on your side of this wall, I don't know what they tell you. I don't know if this letter will go through the post and I don't know who will read it, which inspector, so I won't put my name. What do you think would happen if I did? An ugly thought.

If I'd known I would have lost everything I wouldn't have climbed down that roof, you know. I hope you know that. I would have ran into the forest with you (a safer one, I promise) and we could live like the bears and squirrels do. I would have learned to hunt and cook and whatever else we'd need. It's a stupid daydream I have sometimes, that I could go back and run. I might be delirious, Si. The hunger does get you, doesn't it? I hope you're okay. I know I have it a bit better over here with the new import restrictions lifted. I wish I could send you something. I won't be cruel and remind you of pistachio ice cream. Oops. ;).

If you do not hate me, please write back. And if you do hate me but are alive, please send a blank letter back. Just anything to know.

Yours always,

A."