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Writing is always a process of unraveling. Before tapping away at plastic keys there’s an invitation, a pull towards a center, some ephemeral feeling or a gift: a few shells in a pink mesh bag, golden stars reflecting the sun. How to walk to the edge and stay there, even in the terror of it, even in the unknowing? Before the sea, tide and tide and tide. Among the trees, a return to the self, the thought of home and my failed attempts to get my ears pierced. The inadequacy of it, the many proposed solutions that keep being offered to the problem of being, or being without you, or being so far. Beautiful distractions and hundreds of new currencies, fantasies of flight and accumulation, ownership and victory as a means of false safety—or simply a break from the weight of it all. The simple want to walk on the beach with you without a mask on, or not having to fly an hour, or not having to catch each other in my early mornings and your nights. Few things are as sustaining these days as a call, and even though I know I’m about to move it’s hard to believe it. To face my own decision. To speak without an aim, to not ask for resolution, to keep the space of waiting open. Hélène Cixous, in the final lines of Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing: “I realized that perhaps there must be ‘conclusions’ to my journeys, because these sheets I’m walking across with my hands are ‘lectures.’ But there is no ‘conclusion’ to be found in writing. . .”