these thoughts that come with abstraction

Outside is the Indian Ocean, and I awaken in a dark hotel room with the children. They are so very young, our son is still a baby and fretful and feverish. There are three breathings. Yours is the absent one, so I go to see where you are.

Outside, in the foliage of the night I find you, nestled in a chair with your knees drawn up tight as rock against the sound of the waves. You stare out into the boom of the ocean collapsing towards you. You know I am there but you do not turn, for your thoughts are in the surf: a tumult of breaking and undertow. How is it that you have found yourself here in the country of your birth, trying to remain solid against a slippery world you can't contain?

Another wave breaks and I suddenly see you solitary for the first time. I look at you alone, and you sit alone. Such a boom comes in the equatorial dark and an elation of upward spray as the next wave finds its immovable object. We are, both of us, stuck in this black stasis of the tropical night.
I make a move towards you, lit by the force of first desire and such a splendid moon lighting your perfect drawn-up knees. These children are ours, after all...
Yet it is already much too late. I know it now, but didn't know then. I just couldn't understand the language of the breaking waves.