Later that same day, Eric and I were browsing at the local flea market and I saw three plates for sale, $10 each, whose pattern was the same as the piece I’d found in the sand.  I wondered if it had been a part of the fourth plate, if its demise was why someone had gotten rid of the other three.  At the center of the whole plates were two doves kissing as they hovered in the air.  The picture of the person alone in the boat was there as well.

Eric and I were friends for almost two years before we started dating.  Near the end of that time, Eric left to start graduate school in Colorado.  As a going away present, I gave him a black and white photo by one of my favorite artists, King Wu.  It is a photograph of a single man in a boat traveling down a lonely river in China.  Hills rise up on either side of him, blocking out the sun.  Alone on a raft drifting towards an unknown destination.  It is somehow simultaneously sad and hopeful.  

At the time I gave it to him, I thought it was what life was like for both of us.  We’d prepared, packed provisions, and set out on a journey, but we had no idea where we were going.  Our true purpose was elusive.  The broken shard of china I had found on the beach reminded me again of the journey that we were still on.