Sunrise

Here, now, the sun doesn’t rise until noon, and it sets before five. I got out of bed at eleven today, a Thursday, in the dark. Showered. I went to a café and drank a coffee beside a black window listening to the winter howl. At twelve I took the bus to the lighthouse at the end of the world.

There aren’t many tourists in Ushuaia in the middle of the winter, but on the bus were a young Canadian couple, an old German couple, and three Chilean girls. Local custom would dictate that I hit on the girls. Instead I sat in front, put on my sunglasses and waited.

The sun came up slowly: snow, mountains of snow, trees buried in snow, slivers of water like lightning flashing in the channel. More snow, more ice. Reflected light. The killing crystals made of simple molecules arranged just so.

I sat with my back to the lighthouse, facing land, looking at my own footprints over the frozen salt water. There, out of the wind, I wrote your name on a cigarette. I watched the smoke flee my fingers and mouth and cylinders of ash rolling over the crust, scattering and becoming indistinguishable against the white. Your name blackened and crisped, whitened, and was gone.

It didn’t work. But I did try.