I shiver, look across the deck, and spy Brooke. She grins and her scar becomes a sun wrinkle. Two sides fold into each other, a warm crease, a wondrous line that stretches from pink lip to blue eye. She winks. I smile and it hurts my face.
One final exhale. One final inhale. Filling, full.
And I dive in.
Beneath, icebergs suspended in the grey, I open my eyes. Darkness is endless, all stretching. There’s whale song. The song starts, or stops.
It’s a melody, ocean screaming. My melody waxes and wanes. This story ends here. Dark salt. Black pearl. We choose to breathe, don’t we?
We choose to breathe, I think. And suddenly it’s all dark salt, a neck of black pearls. This story begins here, at the end of the earth. Here, where silence is thick like muscle, a body ancient and strong. And then it fractures, a cliff face cracking, breaking off, dissolving into the sea. The edge of Antarctica, the outer skin, sheds, and frozen stories embedded in its pores thaw and become part of the beyond.
And now I’m under. I’m with her, with you. And the cloud of breath held in my lungs is dark pink, a work of art. My body is cut crystal, glacier ice, refracting. Dying out. Choices memories dreams aches eyes smiling hands touching laughing beating tears. Punctuation is in all the wrong places.
Hear me scream.
I’m a queen tide, full and round, swelling, overflowing. I’m a flood. I am strong. I’m huge. I’m an ice cliff cracking. I’m breaking off. I’m dissolving into the sea. And all the stories in me become part of the beyond.
I just breathed you in.