In and out, rolling and peaking, peaking and crawling. Do they have a specific time pattern? Like a sigh, like how we breathe, in and out, peaking then exhaling, only to peak again.


Is this what it’s like? A slow steady crawl, to a topping out and a gradual unravelling, crashing to my face leaving a thin film of water that finally seeps into the ground.

Sometimes we leave things behind.

The pattern of a wave, reminds me I am living, of the short time I am living, like a breath in and out.

It can touch me. Or, I can submerge my whole body in to its gut, into its breathing, living body and it carries my weight, back and forward, in and out.

It would swallow me, if it could, if it so desires.

But it doesn’t for the moment. Instead it rocks me to sleep. And it deposits my steady, resting body on the sand, on a bed of sand. And it watches over me and in my dreams I hear it breathing, in and out.

My head sinks down slowly, as I softly, slip from its limp salty fingers. and it is ok, down and down.

You see ,inside it I can gurgle all my secrets. Don’t you have something you can’t say out loud, or that you can’t admit to yourself or anyone else, that is... counterproductive.

The murky water doesn’t speak a word, it simply breaths it’s knowing breath and carries it for me, like algae, like air bubbles.

I wait, but at any moment I can inhale. I can.

And I feel my eyes crease a little as I smile, one, two, in and out.

I take the water in my mouth, and it fills my throat and quickly slides down into my lungs, filling me.

We’re the same, breathing the same way, crawling and peaking.

In and in.

I drift into a seabed sleep, not sure if I will wake, but completely careless. Full and bloated.

Then I open my eyes and I am 12 years old, holding my breath in the bath. Beside me in a puddle lies a dead woodlouse. I wonder of its small, shrivelled body. It disgusts me and I don’t like looking at it. The water is tepid and I want to leave but it’s cold outside the tub. My time left here is short, my hands shrivelled, like the woodlouse.