When I arrived at the cottage, the first thing I saw was a spire of shingles stretched above the trees. A turret of wood and wide sparkling windowpanes conspired to create a woodland castle. Not so much a cottage, then. I left my life in Toronto behind at the train station and I breathed my first breath of real air in months.
The lake was in a state of endlessly unfolding itself to reveal warped copies of the trees and sky above it. I told you about a poem I like and I misquoted the line, “You dream in the green of your time,” swapping one rhyming word for another. My carelessness warped the pretty phrase into the suggestion of cannabinoid hallucinations and overindulgence. We laughed at that and watched a hawk swimming circles around the submerged dark pines.
Inside, you showed me the bagels you bought at a winery on the way over and everyone else who had been there at the time told me about the careful way you had picked up every bag in search of the softest ones. You produced a little wheel of basil-threaded goat’s cheese to eat with the bagels and I smiled because you eat your bagels with butter and you do not like goat cheese.
I fell asleep glued to the inner curve of your shoulder. We watched fistfuls of stars wink in and out of existence as clouds rolled past. I was distressed, at first, to discover that I could not find Orion’s belt. This month marks seven years since I moved to the city. My eyesight has gotten worse and I do not spend nearly as much time looking at the sky. You reminded me, though, that we were only looking out the small square of our window. There was so much I couldn’t see in the infinite darkness beyond.
all my marbles 
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