The quiet rust on the garden gate

Dear Delyara, The wind off the Pacific always carries the smell of damp earth and rust up to these hillside houses, but tonight it just feels freezing. We spent three years pretending we were staying together for the orchards, for the olive trees, for the dogs—for anything other than admitting we had stopped loving each other before the youngest even finished school. She didn't leave in a storm of tears; she just folded her wool shawls, put her grandmother’s silver spoons into a canvas bag, and let her brother drive her down the winding road to Viña. I stood by the stone gate until the tail lights disappeared into the coastal fog. I’m sitting in a dark kitchen with two teacups still sitting in the drying rack, realizing that a house built over thirty years can turn into a tomb in less than twenty minutes.