(EW’s own criticdescribed it asa combination of “the best ofAtonementandThe Little Stranger.")
**
The morning sky lightens, and snow falls on the cottage.
Something different about the light in the room has woken Dot and she cant get back to sleep.
Credit: Adrian Harvey
She gets out of the bedfloorboards cold, air colderand puts on her dressing gown and slippers.
She feels a pain.
Behind her left eye.
Tin House
Between her left eye and her temple.
Does the place have a name?
She needs to go to the optician, get her eyes checked, but then what?
How will she pay for new glasses?
She needs to take her prescription to the chemist, but she is worried about the cost.
The light is wrong down here too.
It is the twenty-eighth of April.
The articulation is alienthe hand of an impostor.
But with great concentration she depresses it and the latch lifts.
The dog pokes her snout through, the rest of her body following.
It is a wet coat she wants to shed like the chickens with their autumn moult.
Jeanie, she calls but hears some other word.
She isnt concerned, she has never felt such love for the world and everything in it.
Reprinted with permission of Tin House.
Copyright 2021 by Claire Fuller.
