You think you have everything figured out and then one day the world breaks. Before, you used to be open, inviting. Now, not so much. You try and find quiet spaces where you can take in the light and be left to your thoughts under the blue fall sky. There are rose petals stuck in the sand in the bottom of the sea or it could be bougainvillea from one of the gardens on the coast—the houses whose lights go on at dusk when the sky turns pink. You want to stay here forever in the water, it’s so perfect here.

*

Two monkeys, a typewriter, and a frog enter a bar.

“We’d like to try something out,” the typewriter says.

“How come you talk and they don’t?” the bartender asks.

“Well, I got all the words,” says the typewriter. “He’s about to croak, and they are just monkeying around.”

*

In the near future there will be an answer to your questions, says the fortune cookie.

“But what were your questions?” he says.

“But what if the answer is bad?” she asks.

She thinks it sounds ominous. He thinks it’s a good sign.

*

“The important thing is we are together,” he says later as they, along with everything, get sucked into the black hole.

*

She finds the letter in the bottom of her bag—she meant to send it but she forgot and now it’s been years and there’s no point. The address doesn’t exist. Her friend moved away.

He died. You know that he died. You can say it. (She can’t say it.)

*

You have an epiphany as you’re floating on the surface of the sea. Get it? Surface? Epiphany? It’s funny if you speak Greek. I could translate, but then the moment would be gone. You should have been here yesterday. (An old surfing proverb.) Then you’d understand. The water and the joke. You just had to be there.