Your breath smells stale this morning, of coffee with too much cream and raspberries and the sawdust that rests in the folds of your skin. Your callused fingers, your nails lined with soil – they tentatively reach for the handle of the door of the old playroom. Your eyes are timid, resourceful. Your bones are reinforced with the vitality of the evergreen giants rooted so pensively in the meadow behind the farmhouse.

I wake to a peck on my forehead. Your lips and uncomfortably scratchy facial hair land briefly atop my skin, evaporating like a droplet of salt water sucked up all too quickly by sun. Wrapped in a quilt of faded salmon and morning glories, I open my eyes and gaze first to the ceiling, the aging glass light, then the bookshelf that cradles a few photos of us: me as a toddler wearing Indian pajamas, gently grasping your hands, gazing up to your smile. I finally turn my head toward you. I look up to your smile again – it’s more of a timid curl on the side of your mouth – and to your bald head, your already-sweaty plaid shirt, the gentle rhythm of your breath.

This land made you – it sewed you together, embroidered patches, embraced your raw edges. Your essence is of the musty farmhouse that sits so beautifully amidst orchards, of the sprawling meadow fenced only by the sky-scraping trees, of the stagnant and rusting tractor that now hosts a vibrant ecosystem of overgrown life. It is an essence of the old barn filled with handmade birdhouses, and of the shadowed blackberry patch across the meadow into which you would dive as far as possible, competing against the other island boys in an effort to endure the pain of blackberry thorns ripping at your skin in exchange for the childish bragging rights of being the “toughest”.