There was a wind circling through the port. I didn’t notice it until the crowds and the echoes of their goodbyes were gone, your ferry shunted out. Then that wind swept up around me, thick with the collected cries and whistles and clanging ramps of leaving: dead dust of plastic wrap, coffee cups, candy papers, cigarette butts.
When I got home, Anna came by, as if I’d been expecting her. She sat down on the other side of the table on the terrace, the sea, as black as night, flung out below us. There was no moon, so half her face, her generous mouth, was lost in shadow. Candles on the table flickered alight the other half: the smooth planes of her thirty-something cheek, and when she turned, both her tired eyes, in pockets, all crisscrossed around with care.
Five years away, and she’d only just come back, some hours before your leaving. I knew what she wanted. She sat across from me, unmoving, solid, in that same seat where you’d sit, light, your gentle, rustling presence at one with the sound of the sea. She was waiting for me to talk about you. But there was something in my chest, some mix of rage and pain that made my breathing ragged, made words impossible to find.
