You wake up with a taste of rain in your mouth in your cottage in this arid island of white dunes and perennial summer. The ever familiar face of your partner is illuminated on the moonlit pillow, as the smell of nothing in particular wafts through the forgiving night. You can see the rapid movements of her eyes under the perfectly glistening eyelids, hint of a lascivious, unendurable dream on the corners of her upturned mouth, drops of sweat rolling down the curve of her eyebrows.

After a lifetime of building life together, you ask yourself, how well do you know her? How well does she know all the people you have become? As you learn to wear each others’ persona so that you don’t wear yourselves out, do you any longer remember to ask for knowledge from the seer within? Or care?

You explain to yourself: once we shed off the layers of tissues, to molecules, to atoms, to the electrons and quarks we are left with nothing but empty space. Or, non-space. Unnameable.

You console yourself: the shape of your thoughts and the marks they leave behind on the shape of your bodies are all that you can dare to know. And then the rolling waves outside your cottage flood your mind with the helplessness of a child. Doesn’t matter how many bridges we build between us, we remain islands unto ourselves.