A simple coconut. The expression of something. The second sound, a dull sound, the second time a coconut fell onto the sand with an apathetic thunk. She rolled over onto her back, her neck careening to the direction of the southwest setting sun to see the silhouette of the second brown husked nut sitting in a small crater of hot sand. The sound, and it sitting there, the three dark pupils she would later pierce to draw out the warm fresh milk, made her wonder if she still loved him.

They had been in Costa Rica now for four months and something was lost. Something lost and levied up to the eternal blue sky. Something lost in the laze that was now her deluge of endless hours and a spilling of time and sun; heat and hour that mixed with each other diluting the meaning of each other in this marriage.

Possibly they thought the waves, or simply the sound might speak some great answer to them. That meaning would be found in the mystic arbitrary motions of nature. That leisure and benevolent time might whisper to them as they slept in the dank heat near the roaring Pacific.

She reached out and palmed the coconut, lifting it up until it obscured the sun. From the vantage of shade she could see out clearly onto the starch white expanse of beach before her. There he was standing in the surf where the crash of white foam enveloped his body bending him to its measure, him flexing with it, and returning upright as it sucked its great heave outward again, repeatedly. She lowered the coconut until its shape obscured her vision of him; until she realized its weight and closing her eyes released it. A softer and familiar thunk. Heat and sweat carried her away to sleep.

In the early light of the mornings they would drink coffee, some fresh coconut milk, have sex, and more sleep. Later they would roust again to the sound of the villagers setting up their stands on the dusty beach road that followed the crescent stretch of coastline. To the Spanish clatter and sputtering clefts of old ford clutches that dropped off the wares the proprietors would sell or rather display day in and day out. Reggae inspired flags and towels, flip-flops and papayas, coconut carved knick-knacks from the old husks that littered the mezzanine between town and surf. To the laughter of small dusty children running between the tall swath of palms that lined the coast and cut the heavy east blowing winds that roared through the rainy season. And the two would wake again, moving onto the veranda, rising on behalf of the heat that now worked its heavy rays on the hoods of the houses of the small village.

She found herself trying to manufacture meaning between dark and light. In the still morning before he woke she would clip him in and out of existence. Using her lids like shutters as she lay on her side next to him, alternating them open and closed, him there and gone, there and gone. There and gone, till she stopped, lying there with her right eye open looking out through the small crack in the curtains watching the morning transition out of it’s deep blue hue, where in this lack of light offered the possibility of a parallel universe without him.