Interval

All the life hides in the rocks, but sometimes I like to swim out away from the liminal colonies into the heart of the bay, where what lies beneath that barrier between above and below is sparse and empty. Above that open land I float, surrounded by a shifting jade which has no depth, no perspective, simply colour that surrounds me. Below, the sand is pale and whorled with the fingerprint of the waves, the same waves that lift me up and away from this, suddenly, and drop me back down to watch plumes of sand take flight, dance, settle in pattern anew. Untethered and orphaned seaweed waltz languidly across these little valleys and mountains, and amongst them too are carried comb jellies, their grand ball gowns torn apart by the waves and trailing in tattered skirts behind them. Although lifeless, the water still ruffles the tiny cilia of the hems, and when the sun, bent by the shape of the water, falls upon them, they throw rainbows like secrets. To touch them is to wonder if this, perhaps, it what it is to touch a ghost. A school of tiny silver fish dart away from me, but I am motionless, without hunger, and they come back to circle within my shadow. They light up, bright, pure, when skeins of sunlight catch them, and it is like watching lightning, small and sweet.