It has been years since I wrote, and I promised I wouldn’t, but they came again, those damned milky clouds rolling in to swallow the sun. They dropped that rain over my head, over my heart, over and over again. I thought of escaping, but couldn’t leave. I couldn’t abandon my home, my life, to the endlessness of March and the rain that comes again and again.

The firewood from fir trees gets wet, absorbing the air from outside of the shed where it is kept and it doesn’t burn, it doesn’t provide warmth. There isn’t much of the dry wood left now, so damp piles sit in front of the stove slowly letting moisture into the room.

Winter is nearly over and the rain clouds are as strong as ever as they fight not to be forgotten. They swing at my cabin with great right-hooks of water, smashing against the windows, causing the glass to bend. It moans under the pressure of the wind and the weight of being the only defense I have from the last assaults of March. It isn’t worth fighting now. The mold and moss, the warped photos, the stink of wet canvas. The weather will win. Instead, I succumb as the wind pushes on my face merging tears with rain, and move indoors to be warmed by fire and hot drinks.

I sleep in a loft, which has vaulted ceilings that create a framed bedroom closed-in like the inverted bow of a wooden ship. Sometimes the rain is so strong at night that I’m convinced my roof has lifted off and I am floating out into the ocean. When I touch the tapered walls beside my bed they are sodden and I remember what it is like to be on the water.

I come downstairs during these late winter mornings wrapped in the blanket from my bed and crouch in front of the stove door, placing pieces of broken cedar shingle and newspaper on top of the few embers left from the night’s fire. I watch as the flame grows and when it is strong enough I put the larger pieces of wood in, and then I wait, staring at it. The kettle for my tea rests on top and the sound of it shifting under the heat mirrors me in the morning as I feel my own body shift, my joints creaking as they break from the cold until they finally reach a warmth that lets them breathe as the kettle does, then relax.

I consume very little, snacking on small cuts of smoked salmon with a few pieces of bread I buy from a woman who lives near the lighthouse. She often condemns me for how I eat, telling me I need more variety. She asks me to come and eat dinner with her, at her house, but I don’t go. I don’t eat anywhere but in my home.

I have been here a long time now and I know the spots where the weather gets in and I have come to hear winter speaking to me. I close my eyes and turn my head in the direction of the wind, which breathes comforting songs that tell me I am where I need to be, that I am safe and not in danger of being swept away and lost amongst the mountains of rolling sea.

Some say I am a ghost, pale, suffering from the clouds; that I am in need of a companion and a body to carry me out onto the water. They watch me as I walk past, my tears lost in the rain, and they whisper to each other about the old mariner who used to fish off the rocks in March but who doesn’t go beyond the lighthouse anymore. I hear their words carried over through the air, and after I have bought my fish and bread I sometimes go to stare over the open swell, where I can watch the waves fall against the shore and hope the sound crashing on the rocks will drown their voices.
                   
The stove burns all day and at night I relax wearing only an old woven shirt and canvas pants. It is then that winter speaks loudest. Great swirls of wind turn over in the den, pushed sideways from the heat of the stove and they drop words against the wall before falling silent as I lay there lost in reading. When the time comes I put on the last of the wood and then climb the ladder to the loft, carrying a candle to read with until I am finished being awake and the book makes no sense and falls to my chest. I disrobe and sleep naked under the blanket, which smells of wet canvas, like the pillows and the walls, and the books and the wind and the winter. I sleep there covered in that smell, which must be my smell, and hope I don’t dream.

It happens sometimes that sleep won’t come and I will be left without my pages, without my reading and I will be forced to remember why I am here and not out fishing off the rocks; why the only boat I get into anymore is the one in which I sleep, with the damp walls that speak to me during the endlessness of March. I often stare wide-eyed into that darkness and I see you as the wind storms against the glass, hurling great walls of water at us, heaving our tiny boat toward the shore. I see you crying as rain meshes with the tears that run sideways from your eyes as you fight for us and I do nothing but stare. I stand there with the light from the lighthouse sweeping past as I feel the wind break through the cabin door into where I am and I watch as the sound of water crashing against the rocks drowns your scream as you disappear into the wind and the winter and the great heaving sea that sits beyond the lighthouse.
It has been years I know, and I find my fish dead and stay where I am.