Don't respond

"Don't respond to this -- I miss you and I love you, but you left me with no choice. It's lonely here without you."

I lay in the hammock on our beach with the folded note on my chest. The sea churned, the ebb and flow of its recurring waves keeping pace with the swinging of the hammock. The pale light of the setting sun flickered off the waves. The outer peace quieted the inner turmoil.

A gust of wind blew the note off my chest and into the sea, where it skipped a few waves like a stone cast by a playful child before it got caught in the water. I had tried to catch the note as it flew off and had failed. It now lay in the water, soaked and floating. From afar I imagined the words slowly dissolving, their ink leaching out into the water. I imagined the ink-on-water words getting diffuse and bigger but keeping their rough shape as they floated and got pushed and pulled by the waves. Will they reach our beach and mark those words on it for ever or will they float away into the vastness of the sea? The hammock swung back and forth and with it our world, undecided. I lay back against you, our bodies together shaped the movement of the hammock, my hand played with your hair.