Apricot Press

All her life she dreamt of drowning. These were not nightmares.  She didn’t awake thrashing about in a lather of sweat, tangled in knotted sheets.  They were comfortable dreams which began with running down the long expanse of a pier.  That was the only frightening part, the moment of take-off, of release, her heart pounding, body refusing to fly. Then falling into air, breath held, stomach lurching as she dropped into silence.  Her fall arrested, suspended in light warped through the water’s veil, breath held and then released.

Body supported she unfolded like coral, graceful arms moulding water.  She turned and tilted towards the twilit sea floor, explored the shelf, its crevices and hollows, submerged rocks, swaying vegetation.  Other fish ignored her as if she had always been a part of their world.  The dreams ended at the edge of the shelf where she paused, sea floor dropping away into dense, silent darkness.  She longed to go further, felt something waiting for her, calling to her, out there in the deep dark.

She always awoke feeling comfortably warm until surfacing to the world of air, awkward world of balance and control, noise and confusion. 

Her happiest times were by the sea.  She listened to its slow heartbeat, watched the waves breath in and out, creep up the shore, slip away again.  Its murmur, just beyond range, like the silent call of a bat. A single organism, reaching out to her, then drawing away, beckoning. 

Venturing out on the sea, her body rising and falling with the waves as the boat cut through the swell, her anticipation grew.  Something was going to happen.  She could feel it, like the smell of lighting just before a bolt rips the sky. She saw movement ahead.  A great broad back curved gently through the water.  Spray fountained skyward, brine gleamed on dark skin.  A huge forked tail rose above the water, slapped the surface like a playful child, disappeared and rose again.  A great rounded head arrowed upwards, thrusting itself into the air, its beautiful eye wide open.  With a low moan it slipped below the surface and was gone.

The sea’s pulse grew louder, echoing through the water, through the timbers of the boat, through the soles of her feet into her bones.  As the bow wheeled towards land, the huge head quietly breached again, its large beautiful eye gazing at the boat, at her.  She could not breathe, her mind filled with its voice until she could hear nothing else.

As they pulled away, the great head slowly sank below the waves with one final moan.  She stumbled onto dry land, stood gazing out at the sea and far away horizon.  She walked to the end of the pier, recognised its narrow expanse jutting into the waves.  Making her leaden legs move, she began to run. 

Photo credit: Silvana Palacios