The Cabin

There will always be people who want to live in a high-rise apartment in the city. Or in a new house in a smalltown. Or maybe in a hotel on room service. Or traveling abroad because one place is never enough. But this is what I would like. A small cabin, good books, a warm fire, and a wonderful view. I want the floor to creak when I walk upon it. To be cold at times, giving slippers a sense of purpose. I want to see the beams of the roof that keeps me dry from the rain and the snow. I want to smell the pine when I open the window. I want to hear a woodpecker and birds rather than traffic and sirens. See raccoons and deer rather than aimless people. 

I want to integrate myself into nature as much as possible while still keeping the one part of being human that I love. The ability to have and to appreciate art, and to dream. Somewhere inside there will be a simple writing desk. Solid wood. It might be two hundred years old. Or maybe I built it myself from fallen trees. And there I will be, on rainy afternoons, or snowy nights, writing all my dreams. Writing of a woman I have never met. A job I never worked. A place I've never been but through the passages of books. Doorways of pages and windows of words. Writing of dreams. Those that came to be, and those that have eluded me. 

And though I imagine I will be there alone, how human of me it is to dream that I will share it with you. Both of us reading on opposite ends of the sofa. You wearing your warm and fuzzy socks, still burying your feet under me. Drinking coffee or wine. Sitting Indian-style, playing board games on the table. Lying in bed, recalling things past and things yet to be, watching old black-and-white movies on a seldom used television because you don't remember if you've ever seen Key Largo or not. Decorating a Christmas tree. Making love in the early hours of the morning because once is never enough. Taking the truck to town on occasion for groceries and to have drinks at a small bar that also sells bait and tackle. Everyone is always happy to see you because you are that beautiful. You are that kind. They look at me as though I am the luckiest man in the world because I am. 

"You should have been an actress," the old bartender predictably says. He is a shameless flatterer, you whisper to me. You smile and insist that you are. You've won an Academy Award in my dreams, after all. But you win an award in everyone's dreams, don't you?

I can see you as much as I hope for you. Dream of you as much as I write of you. The dream of you has always been greater than the reality of anyone else. I've said that of you many times before. But if we don't happen to meet, at least I was true to the thought of you. Maybe when I am gone you'll read something I wrote and wonder if I was writing about you. Of course I was, my love. I am terribly sorry that I missed you. I hope you find comfort in my words and feel loved by them the way I loved you, without even knowing you. You are loved the way you always deserved to be loved, if only in words. It is a perfect dream, but only if I never wake from it.