He loved Iris

When Iris died

He wrote her a letter.

C.D. Wright

Iris appeared one night in August when there was heat-lightning along the horizon. The day had been so hot that the barn had begun releasing hundred year old scent. I'd spent the day processing firewood, a dissociative work of reason against nature. I didn't know that I was grieving, didn't know that grief can come without sadness. My grief was a cessation of my body's limits, felt free, felt like swimming underwater without needing breath. That summer I cut, hauled, split, and stacked sixteen cords of wood.

Sitting on the porch after dark, I thought that the house had always been lonely- not for people, but for the years that had filled it, aged it, and left it emptier. As a child, I'd wanted to step into the walls of smooth, undulating plaster, glide along the sloping floors into a time that seemed just out of reach. I would have said then that I wanted to travel back in time. Now I can say that I wanted to live the life of the house.

After my parents died, I felt a special kinship with the house, felt acutely the longing to be known as we can only be by those who have made us. I have lived in this house for most of my life, but there is so much yet that I don't see, because I don't know enough to see it. I am overwhelmed by losses I cannot quantify.

When Iris came, I was used to being alone with the company of a swinging door and a humming light. Iris startled me with movement and intimacy. And then she was gone.