when we came home from Alaska the nighttime was cold and quiet. my home too was quiet. after she left, the cat meowed more. she left the blankets folded on her bed, the one that had been mine for years in a Prius, taking up a third of the floor space where it stayed for many more days. a week in Alaska like a foreign country: blessed the landscape, thorough the surreality. tears were shed for the glory of a pure, exquisite earth. tears were shed of laughter. each day and night stretched long, every one a new blur of beauty, of sharing. how rampant my remembrance, in the soft nighttime silence of afterward.