WE DIDN’T KNOW so much; we knew how to touch. We unpacked our boxes in the box on the cliff. We thought we had time. We stayed for a season. Salt crystals bigger than sugar cubes formed on the spoons. Stereo circuitry went mushy in that air, where the light refracted and sparkled, stark and saline. The waves boomed into sleep until dreaming was booming. Often all this would continue till morning. We would wake entangled; but you were already commencing the elsewhere. You were starting to audition for untangling.

We knew warmth, and we had history: long before, when our friend the architect had said, ‘Terrain One Situation,′ we said, ‘What do you mean?′ and she said, ‘There is nothing between you and the weather. Nothing built.′ I felt the top of my head come off at night, because space grew so greatly, and drowned in that roaring, as the sandstone wore down one electron a decade, and the difference between inside and outside was warmth.