The Art of Being Almost

I almost became a lighthouse keeper. I want to say that first, before the other almosts, because it is the one people laugh at and the one I am most serious about.

There was an advert, a cottage, a light that needed someone to climb ninety-one steps twice a day. I filled in the form in pencil. I never sent it. Some evenings I still imagine her, the woman who did: salt in her hair, a logbook of weather, a life measured in tides instead of emails.