P.

I said perhaps Patagonia, and pictured a peninsula, wide enough for a couple of ladderback chairs to wobble on at high tide. I thought

of us in breathless cold, facing an horizon round as a coin, looped in a cat’s cradle strung by gulls from sea to sun. I planned to wait

till the waves had bored themselves to sleep, till the last clinging barnacles, growing worried in the hush, had paddled off in tiny coracles, till

those restless birds, your actor’s hands, had dropped slack into your lap, until you’d turned, at last, to me. When I spoke of Patagonia, I meant

skies all empty aching blue. I meant years. I meant all of them with you.