Then I realize she does it with her gaze. It does not ask, it does not invite; it simply says, Come! and the men obey. Only when she melds herself to a man does she close her eyes.

Her body is slender. Not curvaceous, not full. Hers is an androgynous figure, the physique of an Amazon whose beauty isn’t immediately apparent to most. When she moves her warrior’s limbs, I see myself. Her dancing expresses my unrest and my anxiety; she dances as if she doesn’t wish to carry on living—not like this—and yet she’s fighting to survive. Her dancing gives voice to my emotions and every shade of my life, the grays and the whites, the blazing fires that consume all color, and the endlessly forlorn melodies too.

She dances, and I watch her for hours and hours, dreaming thousands of different lives. Her movements are harbors, and I’m a castaway. What might be possible with this woman of whom I know less than any other?

I see this unknown woman dancing and in parallel I watch our daughter climbing onto her mother’s feet to learn the waltz, foot on foot and hand in hand.

I see this stranger as I take her to Ty Kerk, unlock the blue door, and take out everything I’ve kept stored away for so long. She’ll inhabit the rooms, and her bright eyes will banish all the shadows. That’s how it will be.

I see myself kissing this stranger’s delicate yet proud neck.

I see her in a white dress in the eight-hundred-year-old chapel by the sea, goose pimples on her arms because she senses that time has a different consistency here. There are places where time is thinner, where yesterday, today, and tomorrow converge and we can feel the presence of the dead and the echo of the future.

It is then that the stranger spots me, and her eyes say simply, Come!

I nod.

After so many hours she strides toward me, her piercing blue eyes as clear and deep as the sun-drenched waters of the Iroise Sea. Her eyes are awash with the ocean, and for the very first time I don’t hate the sea.

I want to go home.

Take me with you. She doesn’t say a word or touch me. She steps very close to me, and I can see her chest rising and falling. She’s so close that her mouth and nose are level with my collarbone. I can feel the air between us being warmed by the heat from her body. She looks up at me, and I breathe out as if it is my very first exhalation and as if time has finally snapped back into place.