When I went to the local Big Save to buy toothpaste and a scented candle, I hoped it would be the only tube of toothpaste I’d have to buy while separated from my wife. That by the time I rolled its end to the front we’d be back together. I studied the options in the shelves and chose the flavor: Sparkly Fun.

I wandered through the tourist aisle and browsed wooden sandal keychains, Hawaii license plates with Aloha, miniature surf boards, post cards with sunsets like the one I watch down the street from the small room I rent on the far west-side of the island. I felt the cloth of surf shirts, plastic fins, foam boogie boards.

I flipped through a book of Hawaiian words. Iniki, in Hawaiian, means sharp and piercing, like the wind or the pangs of love. Iwa is the Hawaiian name for the frigatebird, black and pelican-like, known to be unafraid of stealing from others. These are also the names of two devastating hurricanes that changed the island forever.

At the end of the aisle I chose a candle with a “Clean Linen” scent and its accompanying air-spray. My new housemates smoke and its reek is permanently embedded in all facets of my small room, the lamp shades, the mattress, the curtains, the wooden computer desk, the armchair in the corner.

I need the candle and the air-spray to mask the smoke, but also to lay the foundation of familiarity. My home is no longer my wife’s perfume or the scent of her shampooed hair in the pillow. It’s now clean linen with a hint of smoke, like my shirts and socks fluttering in the dry afternoon breeze along the clothesline in the backyard.

When I wake up in a panic, scrambling across the bed, reaching for someone who is not there, it’s that clean linen scent that returns me to reality. The weight of that reality falls upon my chest again and again each morning. I suffer the small suffocation every time I brush my teeth and roll the end near the front. Each day a reminder and a new pattern being formed. A pattern I don’t want. A reminder I’d rather soon forget.

When I don’t work I surf and when I do neither I watch movies. I rub aloe on my sun burns. I say the Lord’s prayer when I drive home after work. I listen to Drake on repeat, “Just hold on, we’re going home.” I drink beer. I pee dark yellow. My neck always itches. At night I hear waves crash. The roosters never stop crowing.

The next time I go to the store I will buy my third tube of toothpaste. I will no longer be married. I will take my time deciding but eventually I will settle on Sparkly Fun because I hope to find myself in repetition.

The next time you see me I will smell of clean linen and cigarette smoke. My breath will be sparkly fun. I will want to hug you and never let go.

The image above is of the waves I hear at night and in the distance is the forbidden island of Ni’ihau. You can only go if you’re invited by the locals.