Michelle squatted on my bedroom rug, watching me pack. "I don't think you should go," she said.

"Everyone else wants me to."

"I don't." Her eyes were downcast, her palms resting on her thighs, facing up, as if she were sorrowing for me.

"I don't have a choice." I averted my gaze.

"What's wrong with a nocturnal existence?"

"You would share it with me?"

"Of course. We could work together, open a restaurant, perhaps. We have some money. And we could get a bank loan for the rest."

"I don't know anything about restaurants. Nor do you."

"Or start a night fishing business."

"You're just saying that." In truth, I had no reason to doubt that her intentions were genuine. But I didn't think I could handle living in the shadows in my own town, always running from the sun.

"I want to be with you."

"You could come to Melbourne with me."

"I could. But want to be with you right here. In our place," she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "And I know you want to be here, too."

I looked at her, at the determined lips of her Timorese mother, the freckles of her Scottish father. I wanted to believe her. But my eyes grew sore.

My skin felt good in Melbourne. The welts subsided, the blisters calmed. At nights I worked in the club serving up drinks and grilled calamari to those who wouldn't sleep. I often thought how lucky they were to be able to choose when they wanted to do their living.

Most days I slept past noon, waking in time to see a few of hours of daylight, grayed by the winter sky. I walked the asphalt pathways next to the Yarra River that divided the city in two, and I thought of the red sands of Broome and the bands of turquoise in the calm morning sea, colors I saved in my memory.

I thought of Michelle incessantly, how her hair was washed with ochre when the sun shone on it, the grey-green flecks in her eyes, the way the hairs on the nape of her neck quivered when I blew my breath over them. And the scent of her skin in the monsoon nights.

She wouldn't come to Melbourne. She said she was staying where she belonged, where I belonged, and if I loved her I'd come back. We fought on the phone, angrily avowing our own love and doubting that of the other.

They treated me well at the club. I couldn't complain. My employer never spoke of Broome, preferring to forget the bitterness of its old secrets, false affections, and forbidden loves, and he advised me to do the same. My skin was healthy, my life ordered. But before the winter was over, I packed my bags.

I'm not sorry I returned. And I'm not sorry I left again. As I stretch out my hand towards the moon on this first summer night in the year of the itch, I am reconciled to a life in the shadows, no longer hoping for a love stronger than the pull of the sun.

And I marvel how good it feels to lie here, on this damp patch of grass, unencumbered and without pain.