Dear Thule, 

          I am writing this letter to you by daylight, near the window and a thawing tree. 

Did you know that sending you a letter is like praying? It’s a necessity, even if I don’t ever hear back. I hope you are well—I am an animal lately. 

          This morning, I woke up and was certain, for a moment, that if I unzipped my skin, I’d find an arctic fox living inside. 

          Longing for a transhumance existence. 

          When you were born, did a shaman place a tiny ivory whale in your mouth? Did you grow up and become a good hunter? 

          I think of you, wrapped in a thick fur, hand wrapped around spear, and read what you believed: that diseases are of a spiritual origin, that the Northern Lights show flashes of our family in the afterlife, that there are no wind gods and solar creators, that a frail tarneq, a fragile spirit, means the ancestors must walk alongside me, and that you are your own sort of God—

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