Waiting For You

Waiting For You

I wait for you. As I fall asleep, I imagine you at night, deep beneath an inky ocean. From the surface the water appears silken and still. You are beneath, descending into ever-increasing darkness and enveloping silence. You are entering a place I will never know, you are experiencing something I will never be able to experience. Yet I feel I am with you. As my head sinks heavily onto the pillow and I tug the duvet up and over my shoulder, I imagine your weightlessness, an astronaut of the deep, an explorer of an unknown world. The thought calms me as I imagine the drag and gentle swell of dark water around my own body. Waves lift and pull me. I hear them breaking in the distance, a sound like a whispered hush.

In my dreams thoughts of you are technicolour. The ocean is emerald, beams of sunshine refracting in great tunnels of light beneath the surface. The water is almost choked by vegetation: large oily dark kelp and willowy fronds lazily dancing along to the rhythm of the current. Globes and spikes of coral are lavish and abundant. There is something opulent and heady about the scene, if it were real it would hurt the eyes. There is no space or silence here. Shoals of fish swim through the nebulous clouds of krill. The sonic hymn of whale song echoes down and through undersea rivers. You have shed the oxygen tank, flippers and mask. The colour and texture of your body is changing. As you breach the surface for air, water rests in droplets on the surface of your oily skin.

When I wake I am always disorientated, shocked to feel that my hair is dry. I allow myself time to wake and acclimatise. I haul myself out of bed and count down the hours until darkness comes.