1) There are mai tais. I’ve never seen you with a mai tai, don’t know what even goes in a mai tai, but the mai tais are there for me. They’re there so you have something to make fun of me for, a brand new reason to laugh: You concoct a dream world for me and don’t bring bourbon? It’s as if you don’t know me at all — but I do. I do know you and you love fruity drinks; you just won’t admit it cause you’re a man.

2) There are umbrellas. Not just the kind that go in your drink, right arm reaching even now toward the table to move the one in yours up and down (see, I knew you’d love it — you just shake your head), but the kind of umbrella we sit under: not to block the rain, but the sun. I like sitting in the shade and if you’ll admit it, so do you. We want to go to the beach, I tell you, but that doesn’t mean we want a tan.

3) There is the ocean. First and foremost, there is the ocean and if it weren’t for the fact that you need to laugh so badly, baby this is where our story would have began.

4) There is no cancer. Nothing in my breasts, nothing in my lymph nodes, in my uterus or ovaries or anywhere else — no cancer in the world, anywhere. You don’t have to fix me and, baby I don’t want to fix you and there is no brokenness, no sickness anywhere.

5) You can sleep. You no longer wake, right arm reaching out to make sure that I’m still breathing. You no longer stretch your hand over the sheet to feel that it needs cleaning from the damp and the sweat that collect in the night, sickness of the chemo soaking through. There are no sheets on the beach, no beds to make, they do it all at the hotel: 120 linen, 600 sateen and when we lay down together, bodies healthy every night, you tell me this life is good.

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