I want to stop missing you. You’re like all depleted soldiers—unrecognizable. Gone like ash to the ocean; gone like the winter. Who misses winter? I did, once. 1992. Thirteen. I did a science project on solar energy; I charted the path of the solstice sun. How it might warm soda jugs filled with different material: water, stones, dirt. I named it. Our Solar Energy Future.

Understand: On the other side of the world, we’d fought to control oil. My plan to save you and me and everyone else: paint the jugs black. Put them on the windowsill to catch light. Insert long thermometers into the belly of each. Figure how long they retained heat. Repeat daily. Corral controls, variables. Force thermometers to tell the secrets of the sun, the chatter of the earth. Which material held heat longest? How would we heat our homes in the future, if the future came? Would we insulate our walls with water or gravel? Would we paint our houses black? Would we no longer send you to the desert to guard oil?

Winter in Ohio wasn’t special. Not a good season for the experiment. Winter in Ohio made the sky a dull lattice, the ground wet and then dry and then forever frozen, like the stopped heart of the black dog you lost, over there, in that place. But on this day the sun came back. The air smelled like deerskin in the rain. The animals returned one by one, drawn to us, somehow. My sister and I built a miniature ski slope in our flat yard from a snowdrift, polished by the melting and refreezing of snow. We took turns teetering up top and skidding to the bottom. We did this in Keds. We did this in Converse with worn-down treads. We dared the ice to hurt us. You know it didn’t.

My father, displeased, forced me inside. Science fair loomed; the rare appearance of sun provided a window to collect data, and I was wasting it. He set thermometers before me: one for water, one for dirt, one for stones. I had to force each thermometer through the rubber stoppers before sealing them to each jug’s opening. Slow, tedious work. Outside, the shining slope beckoned; I wanted to see it again. I wanted the experiment to be finished so I could slide down. One thermometer. Two. I thrust the third thermometer, hard. It snapped in half, plunging into my palm, sideways, two inches deep.                   

In the emergency room, surgery to remove mercury from a girl’s hand. Six stiches, a scar. The fourth variable, a child’s flesh.

Why am I telling you this? You know how it is, how feeble we all are, how fragile. How friendly eyes can keep a terrible secret. How dull, impatient glass can disfigure at will.

The future came and went. One snowless winter. Two. One more war. Another. And another, again. You know I can’t count. But at least I know not to count on winter. Or water. Or gravel. Or you. Only my flesh fortifies, a barrier to catch poison and sun. Unlike oil, it cannot warm a house or heat a glass of water. And it cannot stop missing you. Only I could miss an ordinary soldier, a daily tyrant. Only I could want winter back.