Marketplace

The woodsmoke arrived slowly, as though it had crossed the city with nowhere urgent to be. It gathered around me and stayed. I knew its kind from another morning, fourteen days earlier, in this same city of Tallinn, when I had been given a name I had not chosen and was still learning what it would ask of me. A name is a small shelter. Sometimes it is also a weight. I will not explain mine here; it is enough to say that I carried it that morning the way you carry something new and heavy, testing its balance against your own.