MARK GAMMILL
POETRY - STORIES - NECROSHADE
Girl From The North Country
He had forgotten the taste of the coffee there—so strong, yet he loved it. The small café in the heart of the North Country hadn’t changed much in twenty-five years. Same crooked chairs. Same frosted windows. Same old radio, playing songs from yesteryear. But Dylan Miller was no longer twenty years old, scribbling poetry on napkins and pretending not to stare at the enchantingly beautiful girl with hair as dark as midnight and eyes that drowned you slowly.
He never meant to stay long, not back then. He was just a college kid with a backpack full of dreams and a heart still too young to know its own limits. He had come to the North Country to hike, to escape the dull ache of expectation and sad realities back in New York. But on the second day of his trip, when the wind lashed against his thin coat and the sky dropped snowflakes like whispered secrets, he wandered into an old bookstore café.
And there she was. Clara.
She was shelving a stack of old poetry books, humming something in French. Her hair was loose, a dark river flowing past her shoulders, and her hands moved with a kind of grace that made everything else feel still.
She smiled at him before he could even open his mouth.
“You're not from here,” she said. Her voice was soft, yet strong.
“Is it that obvious?”
She laughed. “Your jacket’s all wrong. No one from here wears green corduroy.”
They fell into conversation like they’d known each other forever. That was Clara—some people, you meet and they stay outside your life, like stars seen through a telescope. But Clara? She stepped straight inside your life and made herself at home. She showed him the secret trails that only locals knew, cooked wonderful beef stew in her tiny cabin, and read him Pablo Neruda by the fire. She told him her story in pieces—abandoned by her mother, raised by a silent father who died too young, and taught herself to love words because no one ever taught her how to love or trust people.
They made passionate love in the hush of falling snow, his hands tangled in her hair, her lips warm against the frost of his skin. She had tears in her eyes after, though she tried to hide it. She had that way of pretending she wasn’t fragile. But Dylan knew.
She was a fragile fire in a snowstorm.
He stayed longer than he was supposed to. Weeks passed like days. The outside world faded. New York faded. But reality doesn’t wait forever. His mother had cancer. His father was drowning in the grief. The family business was failing: a modest retail store. When the call came, he looked at Clara and saw in her eyes that she already knew what he would say.
“I have to go,” he whispered.
“I know.”
“I’ll come back.”
She touched his face with a painful look in her eyes. “No, you won’t.”
He wrote to her the first few months. Long letters full of memories, longing, and dreams. She wrote back at first. Fewer words. Then gradually silence.
Life did what life does. It pulled him forward. The family store closed. His mother passed away. He met someone else. Married. Divorced. He never loved anyone the same as Clara. Not even close.
But every winter, when the snow hit hard and the wind howled like a forgotten voice, he thought of Clara. Wondered if she still wore that long coat. If her hair still flowed so lovely like he remembered. If she ever remembered him at all.
Now, in his late forties, he sat alone in the café where it all began. The years had carved lines into his face, but the ache in his chest? That felt young and raw and terribly alive.
The waitress, a young woman with kind eyes, brought him a cup of coffee and a letter.
“My grandmother said someone might come someday that’s not from here, maybe wearing a green corduroy jacket. She told me to give this to the man with sad eyes.”
He took it with shaking hands. The paper was old. The handwriting familiar.
Dylan,
If you’re reading this, then the winds have finally brought you back to the North Country. I used to pray they would. I prayed in the long nights and the cruel mornings. Not because I ever blamed you. You did what life demanded. But I needed to believe that what we had mattered enough to bring you back someday.
I stayed here. I didn’t know how to leave. I thought about writing again. So many times. But shame is a hard thing to fight. I made mistakes after you left. Fell into arms that didn’t love me. Raised a daughter who died before her second birthday. Lost myself in winters that never seemed to end. But I always held onto one thing. You loved me once. Truly. Deeply. I saw it in your eyes every time you looked at me like I was the only thing keeping you breathing. I never forgot that.
I’m tired now, Dylan. The world has grown quiet. My hands ache. My heart even more. But if the wind ever carries my name back to you, know this: I loved you. I always did. You were the only lasting warmth in the long winter of my life.
Remember me. That’s all I ask. Remember me as the loving girl with the long, dark hair who once held you so close and whispered your name like a prayer.
Yours always,
Clara
The paper trembled in his hands.
He left the café in silence, walking past the frozen river where they once kissed. He could see her cabin through the trees. Snow buried the roof. A curtain fluttered in a broken window. But it was empty now. A house abandoned by time. Just like her.
He sat on the old wooden bench they carved their names into, and for the first time in years, he let the tears fall.
She had waited. Through sorrow. Through storms. Through a life that offered so little joy.
And he had always loved her.
Truly. Desperately.
Forever.
“If you're travelin' in the North Country fair,” he whispered to no one at all, voice thick with grief, “where the winds hit heavy on the borderline… remember her... She once was the true love of mine.”
And always would be.
Written by Mark Gammill
Inspired by Bob Dylan’s song
“Girl from the North Country”