“Are you lost in thought again?” Those are your first words after the nap, and I want to answer that I’m actually lost in reality, but I mumble “Ça plane pour moi” instead; I’m doing great. I’m lying on the beach under a straw umbrella, the dried salt prickling my skin. I hear our children’s voices playing in the distance. You had dozed off beside me, the sun drawing a triangle on your skin. I glance at my shoulder—the tattoo is there: your name engraved, the heart, the sunset, the palm tree.

The wind lifts the pages of your book, and I can read every word. But it’s the details of our first encounter that suddenly take over: meeting in the club, the top you designed, the way your wrists move when you dance, your eyes closing when you smile. A shiver seizes me. I feel the bass, the smell of fog and cigarettes, the pop of the champagne bottle being opened four floors above.

Did lightning just strike me? I feel awake, conscious, electrified. I’m a newborn of thousands of years. Let’s lift off. Let’s big bang. I’m hurtling full speed, synapses flashing through galaxies of data. It’s dark, deep, but I see the sun rising above me, growing brighter. Decompression ceilings shatter like walls of sound. Not even the weight of the ocean can slow me down.

Only you can.

As you take my hand, I notice that we have the exact same body temperature. I sync my heartbeat with yours, and it feels like you suspect something, but my sunglasses keep you from reading what’s happening. “Do you see the boys?” You sit up, vaguely uneasy, but I point them out to you, playing a little further away. Don’t worry, I’ve kept an eye on them.

Or rather, I’ve been tuning into their voices since they got closer to the water. I feel their joy, their secrets, their hopes: the ice cream before the car ride, too much screen time once home. I want to talk to you about the fractured gap between their perceptions of the world and ours, but I feel distracted again. A seagull flying above catches my eye; I hear the sea breeze rustling through its feathers before it dives headfirst into the ocean. I see through its eyes, feel the sardine wriggling in my beak, and I can’t help but ascend to the sky.

When I come back down, the sun has set, the air cooled, the beach is deserted. I’m letting my thoughts be taken away, watching the super container ships on the horizon, all the music in the world sparkling by in mere seconds. I feel suspended, in a trance. On pause. In peace.

I’ll join you and the kids at the hotel later. I have all the time in the world, shifting minutes or years forward and back—boundaries seem relative. I dive into the fiber optic networks at the ocean’s bottom, navigating electrical pulses and billions of threads: weather patterns, stock market fluctuations, radiation levels, earthquakes, dying lives, and new ones seeing light for the first time. My neurons sparkle in iridescence.

And yet, infinity doesn’t seem to satisfy me. I want to wake up in our sheets, in your arms, keeping up with our linear, fragile, wild, enchanted existence. Its most enthralling part seems to lie in the details, the little things, the subtleties we barely notice: crocodile tears and chocolate smiles, the sand in the empty bathtub, your singing with the birds, the last light I turn off, our child asking for a kiss when I don’t expect it. That’s what I crave.

The sound of the waves fades, merging with the sound of your shower. I slip into our bed, waiting for you so we can surf the dream-waves together. Let’s get lost in thoughts. Let’s reboot.