And So.

Hands gestured on the sandy shore. Fingers pointing at wrists and imaginary watches. Time to go. I began to walk slowly to where the bodies were waiting. Leave the ocean once and for all. Wrap up. Say your goodbyes and return to the cold from whence you came.

I caught a surf the last few feet, tumbling awkwardly onto the shallow edge. Ungraceful last words. But then how hard to get out of that water, how difficult to take the last step. I turned around and ran straight back into the sea, diving with ferocious eagerness into the crashing wave and swimming, swimming back out. Just one more dive. I dipped my head under the surface, let my legs kick into the air and push me down to the rough sandy bottom, swimming through wave after wave. I'd come up for air and dive again into the warm water, immersing myself not only in its soft wetness but in all that it has meant to me these last weeks. Every time I tried to get up I ended up running right back out, like a lover torn from her object of affection at the airport gate and unable to leave without just one last kiss, one last violent embrace. But once more is never enough. I never will have had enough.

Bags lie packed in a hotel room outside Adelaide. Bottles of wine, trinkets of memorabilia and sandy beach towels fill suitcases, while piles of warm winter clothing lie ready for travel. The end is nigh. A month of Australia dries on my skin, mingles with the salty sea, the sand between my toes, with white eyelashes and brown shoulders. A month of Australia lingers in my accent, the slowness of my step, the quickness of my smile.

They say in New York another snow storm has shut down the city. I arrive thus like I left, amidst flurries of uncertainty in the remnants of winter's havoc. It seems fitting somehow. New York does not ease you into anything. You should be glad it lets you back in at all after such an abandonment. I take a deep breath. Start over.

Go Home.