My ass is sore from sitting on this rock across from Junior, my camera, for hours and hours. I stand up on stiff legs, kill the recording, and wander over to our campsite stash.

The sun hovers low on the horizon of the beach, like one of those days in August back home where I’d swear the summer would never end. I chug from one of our canteens to soothe my throat, dry from hours of talking. I tried to be honest for the camera but I’m sorry if I ever made myself out to be something other than a selfish person who lied to the only man who’s ever really loved him.

Yusuf’s gone but still I feel him here, since we’re all bound up and tangled together. His hairs on the pillows of our air mattress. His history books in the fern forest library. He left his stolen Red Sox hat on the mattress. I wonder if the happy, rich, and married versions of ourselves noticed the picture I took of Yusuf and I stuck to their wall. If that and the nagging feeling that the place isn’t exactly like they left it are driving them crazy.

Maybe it’s mean, but honestly, I find that hilarious.

Give me a break. I’m tired and at the end of my rope, just hanging by a knot I tried to tie.

Dinner is a couple of protein bars that I fish out of our hole-in-the-sand refrigerator. I shrug out of my clothes and dip into the warm water of the ocean. I’m killing time, I know, wiggling my toes in the sand and watching the skin of my fingers wrinkle. Watching the light through the water ripple and warp the tattoos on my bare skin. The Wheel of Fortune on my foot buried in the sand, the wolf on my thigh, the lines of poetry that I’d written, thinking I was so deep, banding my arms.

Voiceover: A sad man alone, by himself in his sad, empty world.

The voiceover flubs the line. Take two: A sad man alone and weaving the beginning of a plan.

My feet brush against something slick and hard beneath the sand, what must be a shell. When I nudge the thing with my foot, I feel a ridged opening. I squat to fish it from the water and find that it’s a green glass bottle, the label worn off long ago. I huzz it as hard as I can and watch it flop once against the top of the water. So much for being here on this world alone.

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