I meet him in a liquidation store in Lansing, Iowa, a town that lost its bridge to the mainland. Everything in here is leftover, discontinued. He's holding a whisk.

We drive forty minutes for grapefruit and sliced almonds, highway empty, fields still frozen. His hand on the dial, looking for weather.

February is short. It knows.

At the grocery store, the cashier hovers. Re-scans. When I say have a good night her mouth opens around the shape of can I come with you.

Back at the inn, the kitchen smells of radiator heat and someone else's lavender. He spreads batter with a rubber spatula, thinner, thinner. You have to be able to see through it, he says.

Then slides the tray into the oven. Heat exhales.

The cookies come out brittle as first frost. Almond and air. We eat them with grapefruit slices, juice running down wrists, oolong steaming between us.

I bite through and see light. I bite through and there he is, on the other side.

February ends. The bridge stays missing.

But the holes remain. In the batter, in the sieve. In the moon.