Isolation
The radio died three weeks ago.
The snow hasn't stopped once. I count the walls each morning. Four, still four—to prove the cabin hasn't shrunk.
It has.
—Is anyone out there?
I whisper into the phone's dead mouth. No answer. Never an answer.
The knocking started last Tuesday. Not the front door. The floorboards beneath my feet.
Something patient, tapping upward through the frozen earth.
—Go away.
The tapping stopped. I exhaled. Then the walls moved inward another inch.
The isolation isn't the snow or the silence. The isolation is the cabin deciding I am enough company to keep.