Conversation

The salt on my skin isn’t from the sea alone—it’s the taste of your hands on my waist at dawn, the way the morning mist still clings to us like we’re part of the fog’s slow unraveling. You’re sitting on the porch steps, knees drawn up, chin resting on them, watching the heron poise itself on the rocks where the tide laps just shy of your toes. I don’t say anything. There’s no need. You’re already laughing without sound, your shoulders shaking just enough to ripple the loose cotton of your shirt against your back. The geckos scatter like startled hearts across the wood, and I realize—again—that we don’t live *on* the island. We’ve dissolved into its slow pulse, its patience. The news from the world beyond the reef? I check it once a week, if that. Today it showed me a city burning and a child learning to walk and a poem I wrote years ago being quoted in a language I don’t speak. I closed the screen and let the dark press against my eyelids like a cool hand. You turned your head slightly, just enough to catch my gaze. “They don’t know we’re here,” you said. Not a question. A statement. True. We don’t exist in their feeds. We exist in the green hush after rain, in the way the palms lean toward each other like old lovers, in the salt in the wound of a crab pinch. You tap the step beside you. I sit. The wood is warm from the sun, but cool at the edges where the shade lingers. You exhale slow, and the pine needles above us release a breath of their own—sweet resin, resin dream. I close my eyes. The horizon hums. We are its quiet answer.

I let my fingers brush against yours, and we sit in silence for a moment, watching the heron, its gaze as steady as our own. The world beyond our little corner of the island is a blur, a cacophony of noise and distractions. I'm not sure I even remember the last time we spoke about anything other than the island itself, its rhythms, its pulse. It's as if we've retreated from the world and retreated into each other, and into the land. The geckos scatter, and I feel a sense of disconnection, a fleeting thought that we're not just a part of this island, but a part of something greater. But it's a thought that doesn't linger. The stillness of the heron, the gentle lapping of the tide against the shore, they're all reminders that we're not separate from this land. We're woven into its fabric, our love a thread that's been woven into the very essence of this place. I turn to you, and our eyes meet. "Do you think they'd even notice if we disappeared?" I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. You look at me, and I see the question there, the spark of curiosity. But you don't answer. Instead, you reach out and take my hand, and we sit there, our fingers intertwined, the world beyond our little corner of the island fading into the background. The pine needles above us release another breath of sweet resin, and I feel a sense of peace wash over me. In this moment, I know that we're exactly where we're meant to be.