‘We are both so old’, I think looking at our hands. The thin skin that wraps the bones as a glove. The wrinkles on our fingers. The blue veins. Yet the same feeling of holding her hands as long ago. We are sitting on this small beach made by millions of tiny corals pieces. Sitting at the edge of the water, sipping beer from two bottles. Soft waves reaching the shore in the quiet night. The few rooms of this hotel behind us in this hidden place on this tiny Island.

We are sitting next to each other. My right shoulder is almost, just almost touching hers. We are both bare feet and enjoying the nice feeling of the coral gravel on our feet and toes. We stare calmly at the water.

‘Do you remember when we have been here last time?’, I ask. ‘Yes, I do. How long has it been?’, she wonders as speaking with herself as if running the movie of her life in her mind in a couple of seconds . ‘‘I thin it is maybe twenty six years. It was when we had just arrived here for my project.’

‘Yes’, I say, ‘we were here with the girls. They were still small. How old were they?’. ‘Maybe five and three.’, she replies.

I take a sip of beer while sinking into my memories.  ‘I remember we were sitting here. You had got two beers for us. We sat and looked at the water as we are doing now. I started then to talk something about emotions. Do you remember?’

She turns and look at me. Smiles. ‘Yes, I remember.’, she recalls, ‘You said how great was your need to express emotions and that you had not done it for so long and you were just learning how to do it.’

‘Yes’, I say with a kind-of-embarrassed smile recalling that conversation long ago. ‘Salinger would have said that I was in the middle of my Blue Period‘, wasn’t I?’.

‘Yes, you were and it lasted for some time, I remember.’ She pauses for few seconds as to recall images and words. ‘How many evenings you kept me awake to talk about you and how you were trying to explain to yourself what you did and what you did not do.’

‘Yes.’ I say and stare up the horizon to the stars which seem to want to dive into the sea tonight. Take a sip of the beer which is now almost warm.  ‘Yes, it was my Blue Period’, I think within myself. It lasted for some months. It then disappeared as it came, all of a sudden. I remember trying to explain what I could not grasp for myself. I remember, me longing for love within me, love for myself first of all.

I am in my thoughts when I feel she is moving next to me.  ‘I am getting a bit cold’, she says. I take the pareo which is next to me and put it on our shoulders. ‘Are you better now’. ‘Yes, I am’. I take a deep breath under this starry night and feel the scent of her white hairs resting on my shoulder.