Dear Grandmother,
The water totem on my balcony is humming in your key.
I noticed this morning. I think it has been doing it for weeks. I had the kettle on and the sun was doing that thing it does here where it arrives slowly, like a guest who isn't sure he was invited, and I was half-asleep leaning on the railing with my palm resting flat on the wood beside the totem, the way I always do, and I realised my hand had stopped listening for anything and had started listening to something. That same small low note. The one your pond used to make in the hour before the tea cart came up the path. Not a copy. Not a memory. The note itself.
I did not notice when it shifted. Grandmother, that is the part that undid me. I was there when it was quiet. I was there when the spirits here were strangers. I was there every morning, every evening, with a ladle in one hand and tea going cold in the other, and somewhere between one day and the next my totem decided to start humming your song and I did not catch the first note. I am supposed to be a shaman. I am supposed to notice water finding cracks.
I went inside. Then I came back out. It was still humming. Like it had been waiting years for me to catch up, and had politely decided not to rub it in.
"Very subtle," I told it.
The totem, as you would expect, had no comment. Totems don't do punchlines. They leave that to me. I told it I thought the whole thing was a bit of a low blow, humming at me before the tea was ready. It did not laugh. You would have laughed. You would have swatted my shoulder with the back of your hand and told me to drink my tea before it caught a cold, and then you would have laughed.
I miss you. I wasn't going to write that, but it turns out I was. Some mornings I worry I am building a home out here so carefully that I won't know the shape of the one I left. Other mornings I think you would be pleased. I cannot always tell which morning it is.
The kettle was whistling by then. I went in. The totem kept humming.
I think I will leave it where it is.
— Mist