He finds Florida revolting, doesn't understand the lovely flatness of this place.

I like to go down to the beach at night. Walking towards the moon in the warm water--I can't even tell him about this, I don't know why but I feel my words would
flick back at me, like a whip. I want to say, It's safe here, safer than anywhere you can take me.
Instead I tell him I want to live near the ocean. He looks at me indulgently and I feel as though
I am his child, his wife, his doll, that so much hangs upon his whims, his generosity, his dryness.
I feel as though I am trying to curl around him, find his shape.


Florida is unreal, does not touch you. Decrepitude
is swirled in with a white sun and dried pastels. It flakes away when you
attempt to find its substance.
To him the houses here seem tired, garish as the paint feathering off the lips of all the old women here. He doesn't like old things.

The sea, too, is fierce in its unreality.
The color of the sea is the color of my wife's eyes, a blue that is wet with an iridescent green
so light that the cornea melds into the foam. I imagine walking waist deep into her eyes until the water rises to my lips. She is crying. I press my thumbs into her eyes to staunch the bleeding.

"Start packing."

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