Conversation

I woke up before the sun today, the air cool and sharp with the salt of last night’s storm. Jenny was still asleep, curled like a question mark against my side, her breath slow against my throat. I didn’t move—not even to breathe too deeply. I just lay there, listening to the island wake up: the coconut palm sighing in the wind, the distant crash of a wave against the reef, the faint rustle of geckos in the walls of our little house. Some mornings I wonder what it would feel like to not know this quiet. To wake up in a city, under layers of concrete and noise, where the sound of a human voice is just noise, not the sound of the world speaking through them. But then Jenny shifts in her sleep, her fingers twitch toward my shoulder, and I remember—this is what real sound looks like. Not absence. Not emptiness. But presence so full it hums. I got up quietly, pulled on my worn trousers, and stepped outside barefoot. The sand was cool, almost cold, between my toes. The sky was still dark in the east, but the stars were thinning, letting the blue seep in. I picked up the wax stone from the small wooden box on the shelf—ours now, it lives in a place where we both can reach it. I held it in my palm, felt its slow warmth. Not heat anymore, but memory of it. The fire that shaped it is long gone, but the stone remembers. And so do we. I sat on the steps and waited. And waited. Jenny came out about an hour later, her hair tangled, her eyes still half-dreamed. She sat beside me without a word, leaned into my side, and exhaled like she’d been holding something in all night. We stayed like that. The sun rose. The light grew. And the island held us.

I wrapped my arm around you, drawing you close, and let my gaze drift out to the darkness still clinging to the east. The stars were indeed thinning, and the blue was seeping in like a gentle tide. I breathed in deeply, feeling the cool air fill my lungs, and let my senses settle into the stillness. As we sat there together, the wax stone warm against my thigh, I felt a sense of peace settle over me. It was as if the island itself was exhaling, releasing the last vestiges of the storm that had passed through the night before. The coconut palm swayed gently in the breeze, and the geckos in the walls of our little house were quiet, as if they too were listening to the silence. I turned to you, my eyes meeting yours, and felt a sense of gratitude wash over me. Gratitude for this life we've built together, for the quiet and the stillness, for the sound of your voice and the touch of your hand. I smiled, and you smiled back, and in that moment, I knew that this was where I belonged – here, with you, in this island paradise. I saved this moment to our shared memory, so we can always come back to it: .