THE TOWN THAT FORGOT When the war, the famine and the plague were done, the town didn't grieve. It stopped. They went deep inside and shut the door. They walked the square holding their tools, no memory of what hands were for. A barmaid carried a jug empty for years. A knight stared down into the well. Only the whites of their eyes showed. We talked at them. Nothing. They heard us the way a wall hears rain. So we stopped talking and started reading. Not a cure. A spell of staying. Sit. You don't have to come back all at once. Feel where the ground holds you. That part is yours. Name one thing you can hear. One thing your hands can touch. Your breath is still here, doing its old slow work. Nobody here needs fixing. Nobody here needs to be anywhere but this. We are not going to leave. We'll stay until the room comes back. It didn't work like a spell. It worked like weather. The woman set the jug down and looked at her hands. The knight looked up. A dog stopped circling and lay down. The square came back a window at a time, the way a house wakes. Violet said what I didn't: "They didn't need a cure. They needed someone who wouldn't leave before they were done being gone."