I will escape to a cabin. Forest will surround the structure, but not a cold pine forest. Trees with wide, bright green leaves. The trees will grow tall and connect their branches in a dome over the house. The leaves, translucent in the sunlight, will take advantage of the breeze to brush against one another. They will blush, pretending it was an accident. I will line the kitchen windowsill with teas and jars of herbs and it will always be mid afternoon there, and late in the summer. The floors will be hardwood, and the light through the windows will always drench the same corner of each room so that the floorboards become sun-bleached in stretched out rectangles.
I will be courted by a handsome raccoon for months, and I will eventually allow him to call himself my boyfriend. He will sometimes bring me trinkets, and when he does, though I am touched, I will sit him down and ask him to be honest and tell me where he got them. Though he is wild, and a thief, he will not allow himself to lie to me. If it is a small thing, a blue bead or a golden gleaming bottlecap, he will usually say that he dug it up from the nearby riverbed. On some occasions, the gift will be more suspicious, a pair of diamond earrings, or a calligraphy set, or a first edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and I will tell him that he must return the item to its rightful owner. I will reiterate that stealing is wrong, and he will nod in agreement and apologize, but he will bring me another gift I know he can’t afford a few days later. We will have the same conversation, and I will always forgive him, and it will go on like this, in the mid afternoon.