The Cabin

I can sit by myself in a crowded place and pretend to be alone. I go inside myself, envisioning my skin as a cocoon. It separates me from everything outside — the roaring sounds of voices, the clanking of bodies in motion — all dial back to a murmur. It’s a skill I’ve adopted over constantly finding myself in undesirable situations. I think: I can endure if I pretend it’s not there. Sometimes I chant inside that nothing matters. A sweet lie to wrap around myself. It’s a bubble boy mind trick.

The chanting and the inner world building has me craving real solitude. The kind you can’t get in a city. The kind you have to travel in this modern world to find. So when I’m inside myself, unable to get away, my skin becomes the cabin.

I imagine a place a real life hermit once lived on a small plot of land next to my grandparents’ farm. Thick logs packed on top of each other, impenetrable, it sat in the nook of trees shaded from summer sun. When the hermit passed, the land was bought by my family and my grandmother fashioned herself a painter’s retreat. She was a shy painter, never praising herself as especially artistic, despite the fact that I was often praised for being so. The lingering aura of the hermit must’ve rubbed itself into the place, for no one spent much time in her painter’s cottage. Not even my grandmother. It’s main artist occupant became spiders. Their intricately designed webs left to decorate the space.

I close my eyes to conjure it whenever I need an escape — blurry green and blue shapes, a sky clouded with the shadows of leaves. I feel the wind blowing against my skin, it might be an artificial breeze in reality, but inside it rustles a faint sound like nature sighing. The memories of homes like this fill in the mind’s illustration. Tall trees surround a wooden deck. Low flowing creeks bubble below my feet on a slopping hill. Horse pastures on the horizon buzz with dull life. Comforting images to pull from. I must be careful not to remind myself the places no longer exist. They are only faded photographs now. Time stamped memories with an expiration date. If I remember too much I’ll cry. Just for a moment, the pain of loss can feel freshly planted. So fresh I can smell it’s sharp sting in my nostrils. I too push that down, deep inside of me. Even deeper than the calming atmosphere beneath my skin. To a chamber inside my heart where pain is dampened by the flow of heavy blood. Oxygen threatening to catch fire and burn it all away. Again, it’s just me and my inner cabin.

Life itself is a living creature. The act of it a parasite to be fed with age. No medicine can cure the infection, but many tinctures are invented to minimize symptoms. Experience competes for real estate on a landlocked island. Every day expansion. Every moment begging for more room. The original blueprint drawn over until the paper gives way beneath the eraser.

One day, when I am full and the paper can take no more rubber, I’ll build upward. Upward until my inner buildings no longer support themselves and everything inside me crumbles. When that happens and my body dies, worn to rubble, I wonder where it will be rebuilt. What new shape can hold the ashes of a life? Where will the old me hide? Maybe there’s a cabin on the other side.