Sinking, Dying, Loving

Wispy storms make the beach better. It’s a little known fact, because most are afraid of the rolling tide and ominous clouds, the water inescapable as it touches everything in sight. But Alex and I know. When the weather reports a rainy day we pack up nothing and just drive. A hoodie and a cold car is all we need. I like the rain because it makes me think, and it’s always been a fine habit of mine to just let my thoughts wander and think about what the day brings me. The cold brings me shivers but the goosebumps get my mind going. The gray tones of winter emphasizing yet also dulling the rough tide of murky green bring me ideas that would usually escape me.

Alex flutters along the shore, timing the breaking of the waves, picking up the random bit of seashell here and there, and digging his toes into the wet sand to burrow after the sand crabs that tried again to get a proper taste of the sea. As I stay a little ways away and think about him, the mere thought and sight better than any rare seashell or stormy day, I get working on something else as well. And it’s darker than the usual things that get me going, but once I’ve started, I can’t stop. What would it be like if I let the ocean take me?

I’ll sink down in, slowly, shutting my eyes tightly at the chilliness of the water and how it soaks my clothes, drenches my skin. Alex won’t notice at first, he’s always too busy being distracted, being somewhere off with himself. But when he does look up, he won’t even believe it, think of it as a dream, one of those scenarios he conjures up in that imagination of his. Then he looks back behind him, though, all around. A one-eighty, a three-sixty, until he finally shouts, “Jack, stop! What are you doing?” And I’ll turn my head to him, catch his eye and grin- he seems to suddenly understand in an instant. He doesn’t think I’m leaving him, and he shouldn’t, but knows that it’s a vacation from a vacation that i’ll never return from.

The water will be cold, so cold, and the fear will be just as cold- though faint and quiet under the ocean waves, creeping up on me. They’ll both target my heart with their icy spears and frozen swords raised high. I won’t let them in, I’ll stand my ground, but eventually the sandbar will drop off into nothing, into the blue-black abyss hovering with its teeth bared just below me. At that point my shields will fail, my walls will collapse and my army will be washed away, swept mindlessly into the endless mouth of the salty beast. I’ll only laugh as they invade my senses and conquer, override the Jack that Alex used to know until I’m just floating and trying to sink, an aimlessly drifting bell buoy of the old Jack. It’s a humorless laugh. Dry, yet soaked and over-quenched by the sea water until it too is watery and drowning like me.

The winds will push and pull him towards me, urging him to run, swim, make haste to my finally unconscious body. But now the sand crabs crawl up from under the sand again, chaining his feet to the shore, no longer cowering at the sight of him. And maybe they’re right to. I get towed away further and further from him before the shock can even leave him; he wouldn’t have stood a chance, I couldn’t have been saved. He could only stare as I’m tugged further and further down, my skin turning gray and my veins turning black like the prawns in the deep sea below.

I think and realize I’d never want to intentionally leave Alex. And if I did one day get stolen, I’d never let the undertow keep me down. Weights on my feet and jellyfish stings could not keep me from swimming on to get back to him. But as much as I would rather spend a thousand of my lives tortured than to live one life without him, I can’t help but think, let my mind wander. If the ocean waves were enough to take me down and flush my lungs with water- would he follow after me so that we could drown together? Or would he give up and swallow the sand as he cried, screaming after me as I disappeared beyond the horizon, to be broken down until I arrived on some other shore, another seashell for someone else to love?

I’m brought back. He looks slightly surprised as I place my lips on his cheek, whispering that I love him above the sounds of the sand and rain and waves and quieted birds. But then he smiles, and I don’t say anything to persuade him into a decision. If the time ever comes, I’ll let him decide what to do with me. I wouldn’t want to be the forceful current that sucks him into the place where he dies. With or without me, Alex is his own. And I’m a good soaking of bitter saltwater, hoping for love and possibly, the next victim. I’ll let the ocean take me, but the rest is up to him.