Tribal owl tattoo on the side ribs

The owl came back to the tower on the third night after the grid went dark, and I have decided it is a sign, because I need one and you are not here to tell me otherwise. It sat on the rail of the old water gauge with its head turned all the way round, looking at me the way the foreman used to look at a bad weld. I gave it the last of the dried sardines. It did not thank me.

Since you left, I have been keeping the lamp lit by hand. Each dusk I crank the generator for twenty minutes, then climb the forty-one iron steps with the spare oil and the logbook. The log has your handwriting on the first page and mine everywhere else. I tell the owl what I have written. It listens with the same stillness it gives the rats.

Nobody on the mainland has answered the signal in eleven weeks. The curling marks on its breast, the swirls that the salvage crews love to scratch into their hulls, make it look as if the tower itself is breathing out. Some nights I believe the owl is a message from whoever first drew those patterns, telling us the dark is only a shape, and shapes can be read.

Tomorrow I will climb with the lamp at dusk, and the owl will be waiting, or it will not. Either way, the light goes up at seven. Keep your own lamp burning, and if you see a bird sitting very still on a rail, that is me keeping watch.

Yours through the dark, Ansel