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I'm decompressing from my time in Key West. My phone is off, so is my desire for company and interaction. I want to stay inside my own head today. It was intense.

In an intensely beautiful place, I was intensely relaxed, like a flitting butterfly, destination unknown. I hopped the trolley one day and wondered through the sex megastore; I had a quiet supper at a waterfront Cuban restaurant. I sat at a sidewalk bar on another day, sipping a mojito and dipping conch. I spent too much on two stunning dresses, mindless of bills.

I hopped the boat to the Dry Tortugas and tried to snorkel in the clear but choppy sea. I stood at the bow of the dipping boat with a Corona for more than two hours, all the way back to land, glimpsing turtles and flying fish every so often. It was a space I belonged and needed to be.

I danced to bad reggae at Sloppy Joe's and talked with a drunk man about how he lost his boots.

I spent three hours in the airport on the way back to life again, wading through hundreds of work and personal e-mails, the gathered minutia of disappearing for four days during a storm for my own reasons.

I'm already wondering about my next escape. Life is intense.