The Arithmetic of Hunger

You spread the inventory across the mess table like tarot cards: vacuum bricks of freeze-dried stew, three sleeves of crackers gone soft, a tin of pickled herring older than your career. Sixty-three days, by generous count. The polar night will last one hundred and eighty.

You write the numbers on the chalkboard and stare until the chalk dust feels like a verdict. Subtract one from the other and the remainder is a person who does not come home. You try the arithmetic three different ways. It keeps giving you the same answer.

Outside, the wind makes a long, patient sound against the windows, as though it can wait.