"For all we learned the sea...." -Dar Williams

*
Francisco is driving fast so we'll get to Fajardo in time to catch the ferry to Culebra. I fiddle with the knob on the radio and drink his share of coffee. We talk about all the reasons we could never live here again, a familiar conversation, and then lapse into the quiet, comfortable silence of couples who know each other so well that talking, sometimes, is just to fill the air's blank space.
*
The ferry's late, of course, and as we wait an old man with a sun-weathered face peddles pasty looking pills crowded into crinkly plastic envelopes. "Pa' la ma..reeeeaa!" he says, over and over, though the people likely to need his seasick pills are unlikely to understand him. The call is familiar in his mouth, but I can't tell if he's desperate or bored or ashamed, or some combination of the three. After all, there are so many emotions without names that we feel but don't really understand.
*
The ferry plies through the waves, churning up sheets of pointillist droplets that cool the skin. I read and write and stand at the rail, looking over the side.

Francisco, who's been talking with a man at the rear of the ferry, comes up behind me.

"The sea's pretty rough, right?" I ask him.

"Well, we're navigating between two islands," he said. "That's the reason."

The quiet, and then: "I feel exactly the way I felt the day I left Cuba."

I think about the handful of times we've talked about that day. How did he feel the day he left? Or the two days on an overcrowded boat, navigating the straits? And then I think there's still so much we don't know or understand about each other.

"The first lesson," he said, taking my hand, "is not to look at the water. It's the horizon. Always the horizon."

It's only when we dock that we grow quiet again.