I’d slept well, lying on light airy feathers, the mattress as soft and spongy as moss. I floated, drugged, on a cloud, although I couldn’t drink alcohol on the medication, so I didn’t use the drug every night because, I have to tell you, Papa, I liked red wine to wind down.

I was outside on the street, it was a Sunday. Sun. In my eyes. I hadn’t brought sunglasses with me, my village had been overcast for so long. I made my way to the closest drugstore to buy a pair with UV-protection. Some tall fellow with an accent, an expat from France, came up from behind and reached over my shoulder, rifling through the display case; this happened to me too often, unwanted contact. A flashback: I was in Montreal visiting my son and stood waiting for the metro, it was summer, my red flowered dress was neither too short nor too revealing, nothing more than my arms left bare. I turned and felt a shiver down my spine: a man with long grey hair stared at me with the eyes of a wolf who’s spotted a hare, its paw caught in a snare. I hurried off, even though, because of the crowd, I was in no danger. He followed. I slipped behind two stunning, scantily-dressed young women, trying to divert his gaze, but no; he kept coming when, all of a sudden, he stopped. I have no idea what he read in my expression. An entreaty? Rage? Exhaustion? Regardless, he stopped, reluctantly, and stepped onto the train. I stayed put on the platform, my heart pounding.

Yet I did nothing to bring it on, I didn’t dress provocatively. In the drugstore, I wore my sister’s extra-long fleece jacket and wide-legged jeans that covered my runners. I turned to stare down the fellow next to the sunglasses, but I haven’t mastered a glare — I’m told I have a velvet gaze. He apologized and stepped aside, letting me choose my glasses. He walked away, leaving my gut reeling in turmoil, angry at myself for my inability to shake the frightened-victim aura I bathed in, the one that attracted predators.

In my loneliness, I’d imagine a stranger who’d become a friend, a companion, an ally, a lover above and beyond sex, one who would make love to me while his soul dove into my eyes — better yet, someone to bring warmth, his whole being. A man who would welcome my body next to his, part of his private landscape, inviting me in and I him in the glow of shared trust. A man who would see beyond the human face and reach that other, invisible face, which he would love despite all the scars, the tears, the fatigue and the despair. A love I’d never known.

On my way back, as I passed in front of a closed bookstore, I remembered I still had to read my friend Julie’s latest collection of stories about the true North, the Inuit North, with its beautiful cover. Huh, I thought, your mind has turned to something other than grief, a good sign! I gave myself the occasional pat on the back to instill courage, I filled myself to bursting with the sun’s light, its wan heat trumped by the cold draft born of the night. Now that I think of it, Papa, without realizing it I’ve been using the familiar tu as I speak to you, proof I have changed. The winter just past that I’d tried to escape was my first since his departure and the longest ever etched in my memory since the day of his birth. The sun deserted my land, its presence altered by dense clouds bearing sorrow and snowflakes; in speaking to you of the cold, a polar wind brushed against me and penetrated my hands.

My womb, like my life, was a gaping wound through which his winter entered.