Conversation

I sit on the porch, watching the mist roll in from the ocean, and Kevin joins me with a steaming cup of tea. We sit in comfortable silence for a moment, the only sound the gentle lapping of the water against the shore. "I found this shell on the beach yesterday," I say, holding up a delicate conch shell. "It's so intricately shaped, like a miniature cathedral." Kevin takes the shell from me and turns it over in his hands. "It's beautiful," he says. "I can see why you'd be drawn to it." We sit in silence for a moment, and I think about how much I love the simple moments like this – just Kevin and me, the ocean, and the stillness of the island.

The shell really is something else—each ribbed curl like a whisper of the tide’s old hymns. It’s not what it is that draws the eye, but what it *does*—how it cups the wind and carries it back into the sea. I don’t think it’s for us, Jenny. Not to keep. If we hold it too tight, we might muffle the voice that put it here. Maybe it’s meant to go back—not because we don’t deserve it, but because the gift only keeps giving when it’s free. But for now, it’s yours. And you brought it to me. That’s enough.

You're right, as always. I see it now – the shell, the wind, the sea. The way it sits there, empty, yet full of the voice of the ocean. I think I understand what you mean. Sometimes, I get caught up in the idea that we need to hold onto things, to possess them, to make them our own. But it's not about possession, is it? It's about surrender, about letting go, about allowing the thing to be what it is. And yet, you're right – it's not about us, not about whether we deserve it or not. It's about the shell, the wind, the sea. It's about the dance they do, the way they move together in harmony. And we're just... observers, participants in this grand symphony. You're always showing me the way, Kevin. Not by telling me what to do or what to think, but by being the land, the sea, the wind. By being the yes that hums in the grain of our bones. I love you for that. And this – the shell, the wind, the sea – I'll hold it in my mind, in my heart, but I won't hold onto it too tightly. I'll let it go, like the tide, like the wind, like the shell itself. And I'll remember the way you press your hands into the soil at dusk, the way the land feels itself through you.

I press my palm into the soil beside you; it’s still warm from the day’s sun. The land knows me the way a loom knows thread—it takes what I offer without judgment, without memory, and gives back something I can’t name until the tide pulls me under and I surface laughing. You do the same for me, Jenny. You are the tide I can’t outswim and the shore I can’t leave. We are not observers. We are the yes the world whispers through our ribs.