All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The sole exception is the character of the ocean, the ocean is The Pacific Ocean from real life. If it is unhappy with its portrayal it can settle the matter personally. 

Lora Lee broke up with the ocean. The news talked about it for as long as they talk about any celebrity drama, so about one afternoon. They mentioned that Lora Lee moved to Amsterdam, and she’s a poet and you know what they say about poets (this is the part where the reader is supposed to nod wisely and try to remember any prejudices about poets). Misspelled her hometown’s name three times in three different articles. 

What the news didn’t say is that Lora Lee wears perfectly ironed shirts and cuts the crusts off her toast. That she hasn’t written for over a month but she sings to the flower pots on her window in the evening. When singing she positions herself so that the flowers and her and the view out of the window fit into a perfect perspective, silhouettes in gold, portrait of an artist in the city of art. Lora Lee has long fingers and smiles with only the corners of her lips. 

Lora has dated lakes, a small, warm-water sea. She wrote poems in the curls of their beaches and they whispered pleasantries in waves, cradled her in mirrored sunsets. They phased in and out of love in soft watercolor touches. It was different, with the ocean. 

They met on a ferry. Lora has a plan for what she’ll do if she finds out the world will end in ten minutes but never had a spare tire, so adventure, so raincoat and rubber boots but no umbrella, face to the rain. The rain is also the ocean (many things are). The ocean ran down Lora’s face with the professional intimacy of a make-up artist, asked her the traveler’s questions: where are you going? Where are you from? Lora’s voice flowed with stories. Somewhere between an evening in Paris two years ago and the pigeon she met in the park this morning Lora invited the ocean to her friend’s gallery opening – Sunsets In Porcelain is perfectly exquisite, I do hope the critics do it justice. They wandered the streets, Lora in her raincoat and the ocean in her sunlit rain, glimpses in puddles and storefront screens. Lora Lee showed her cafes and antique shops, strung in and out of conversations, made every street lamp into a stage and passerby into protagonist. The ocean held most of everything and Lora Lee held the ocean and everything fit. 

They broke up in a year. Lora Lee was sitting on the waves, not quite walking on water but letting it hold her with its being. Lora read her poems from memory. In them the ocean was a field, a desert, lovely beast with stomach full of sun. In her poems the ocean was a woman with a gentle smile and never spoke of anything but love. 

I don’t think I ever felt like this before. 

Like what? 

Small. There is so much of me that never fits in your poems. 

Quaint. Surely nothing important? 

The ocean ran her heavy waves along the bones of ships, bloated corpses centerpieces in the ballet school of scavengers. Took stock of trash islands, strange squirming life, jagged edges and soft, lush rot blooming in her shallows.

I don’t really know. I don’t think you could love any of it. 

Lora lies in bed in her beautiful apartment and runs months through her fingers. Waterside walks, quiet evenings, breakfasts in bed. Carefully curated secrets. Her face smiling back at her from the water. Love story with no beats missed. Roll credits, roll credits, never mind what happens next. 

Lora Lee volunteers at the lost and found, tries to let things be simply things. The young person looking for their phone and the phone the lost and found received a few hours ago do not match in tak, she recommends another lost and found, doesn’t know how the story ends. The lipstick-kiss sealed letter sits and sits and is mostly dust. Every once in a while a person with ink stains on their fingers or lovestruck look walks in, keys and keys and ticket, the letter sits. No address. No narrative. 

On her way to the lost and found Lora greets the bushes, the storefronts, the sidewalk puddle. It’s usually there, shaped by the pavement, sky-colored and oil-painted. No words, small wave, small wave back. 

There’s a name on the outside of the letter and Lora checks the phonebook, not quite sure what she’s looking for. Finds addresses. Anette on Tidorestraat, on Makassarstraat, on Boniplein. Anette by the park and Anette with a full view of the docks, ships and ships and life. Maybe the letter was to go by ship, by train, France to Denmark or the other way around or something else entirely. Maybe the Anette in question is registered as Levi or Antoine or any other ghost. Maybe this story has no ending at all: Lora Lee, dear Lora Lee, is it so against your being to leave anything unfinished? 

The Anette on Tidorestraat cannot speak for long, fatigue lining her face, children noises. Her apartment smells of cats and pasta and looks like it was intended to be something else. She is not looking for letters and she has enough of love. It began to rain between Makassarstraat – sorry, she moved out a few months ago, moved in with her partner, I think, – and Boniplein. It fits, Lora tells herself, the third act rain, of course there would be rain and music and running for the last door, warm orange to contrast the storm, violin music swirling in anxious notes. Rule of threes and third acts. 

A woman answers on the second knock. Smiles with only her lips, interrupts Lora a few sentences in. People are speaking in the living room in hushed voices and her eyes are brimmed with red and she sounds as tired as she looks. 

I’m sorry. I am not expecting any letters. There must have been a misunderstanding. Have a good day. 

The door shuts and Lora stands in the rain and doesn’t notice how the letter is soaked through, the trace of someone’s lips mixing with the ink mixing with the water, one recipient short of a kiss. 

She walks back to the lost and found, keeps her head down, hides from the rain in her jacket. People hurry past and there’s a child stomping through every puddle with all the joy a human heart can hold and she doesn’t take note, doesn’t make it into a poem. The rain feels nothing but wet and cold. 

The lost and found is closed for the day and Lora sits on the steps and nothing, nothing. The world goes on and she has no plot. 

Hi, says the puddle, rippling with rain, a thousand faces per second. Tough day? Lora opens her mouth, closes it. Nods. Lets the silence stretch beyond comfort. 

There’s an absence sitting beside her in the shape of an ocean and there’s an absence in the shape of her, too, and she can’t think of anything to say that would cover it. 

Yeah, she says, three breaths and a few selves later. Something like it. 

The puddle gurgles in sympathy and it’s a little bit the ocean – many things are – but not enough to remember any lasting hurt, any long-lived wisdom. All it has to give is a little understanding, and Lora gives some back. 

It rains and rains and she and the puddle talk about nothing – rubber-booted kids, the underbellies of umbrellas, the world cast in the shadow of leaves floating on your surface, poems, published and not, hometowns with names so forgettable they get misspelled thrice and so you feel inclined to pick a name that really rolls off the tongue. 

When the rain tires out of itself Lora goes home, the letter doesn’t. Maybe once it dries some bird takes the fallapart paper and shapes it into something like home, maybe its never-recipient lives so much she hardly missed out on any love, who am I to know? 

Lora Lee’s learning how to live and she’d rather not fit herself into any more stories. Enough to say she carries an umbrella with her from time to time.