Dear Sionna,

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, and now – at 2am with the temperature falling – I need to tell you so.

We’d planned it out so carefully. Worked out the mileage, the time allotted, and how we’d make the pilgrimage from there, to here, and back.

This sudden shift has come as a shock, I know. When we left you there – jacked up, tied down, stripped of everything that made you a home for us – we were coming right back. We spoke as we packed of our return in the fall, and though you couldn’t hear it, we talked as we drove north of logistics. We’d do a bit of work on the car and then drive down ourselves in late October, store the car there where you’d spent the summer, finish those projects we’d started and this time – this time by God – we’d point your pretty bow east toward the islands. We’d make the Bahamas, like we’d promised we would, and drop the hook in foreign sand at last.

But it hasn’t happened that way.

I know we said we’d be right back. “Just six months”, we said, and we’d be together again. How could we know the wanderlust would fade? Who knew that adventure would lose its shine, in an instant, like the turn of a page?

You took such good care of us, and now it feels as though we’ve failed you. Abandoned you to the hurricanes and possible thieves in the boatyard, and the even more subtle thievery of time and heat and rain. You deserve better than our faithlessness.

I want you to know, it’s not your fault. You’ve done your very best and kept us safe from harm and risk and our own mistakes more times than I can count, and it tears my heart, sometimes, to see what has become of the plans we made together. You’ve done all that we could ask, and more, and done it very well.

I hope you can keep faith better than we, and know we’re trying. Somehow, someday, we’ll bring you home. Keep your spirits up and your bilge dry, as best you can, and wait for us. I swear, I’m not ready to swallow the anchor yet.

May my promise not sound as hollow to you as it does to me.

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