I'll stand up and let you know I'm not going to go before I stay here another long year.

In the long gray hall outside the pool deck inside the apartments by the water. That's where I'll say those words to you, and you'll hear them, but it won't be days before you don't think about it. And we won't talk about it.

And the trees will drop all their dead leaves like I said they would, and the sea will swallow up another portion of our cliff. And it won't be long before it's all gone, this hall will become a pit and a funnel and swallow the pool and the water in it and the tree and the leaves in it and the apartment and the people in it and we'll be on a flat plateau like it was before we got here, before the apartment was built here, before the roads and the lights and the sounds. And I'll pretend like I won't miss all these things.