HOME | DD

Description
Dark water, dark waves. The night is thick.

Black rocks and black slip stream, the sound of sea on skin, slick, sucking, soft.

The spray whispers and whispers the same sad song.

It's not enough, not enough.

It is cold and sometimes he imagines the sea watches back, with wet, luminous eyes.

Remember, remember.

It's too cold, but he doesn't care, watching the sea glide back and forth, he imagines a dark mass amongst darker masses that separates itself and slips back into the sea, hair waving like weed, the smell of salt.

He remembers.

Wet eyed girl, not soft and sad but hard like sea coal washed by the waves, the scent of salt in her green hair, fading to blue at the tips. She seemed to float, above all the detritus, the lagan, her eyes forever on the horizon.

They turned on him.

Promise not to fall in love with me. It's not enough to be loved.

To be seen by day, never by night, by night she was her own creature, out on the shingle 'til her feet bled, to be kissed by the surf.

It was alien to see her, bright beneath the sunlight, fingertips touching, coral smile of serrated teeth, so strange, the calm and safe surface, the raging current beneath.

Did he press his own impressions? His perception his own, manifest in an ordinary girl, a victim of his own overactive imagination? And what was a midnight swim once in a while?

And he promised not to love her, but promises aren't enough when a heart heeds the siren's call.

He followed her that night, saw the moon make her salt-skin glow, her hair dank weed down her spine, and how her shadow ran out before her to strike the sea. For a moment her profile was a stark outline against the star-slit sky, eyelashes sweeping the horizon, did she know he watched?

And then she stepped out of her skin, and into the sea.

In the back of the cupboard is a box of sea-bones; shell, weed, cloudy glass and coal, the collection of weed and shells he found that night where she had been standing, that down on the sands looked so like a drowned girl. He comes every night to the sea limits, he comes back and waits and waits. How could he know he has taken her flesh, her human form, when she slipped away into the sea she can no longer return.

He waits and waits.

It's not enough to be loved, but to be loved in return.

A sailor's fantasy? A murdered girl?

He waits and waits.

Enough, enough, enough.

Description
Dark water, dark waves. The night is thick.

Black rocks and black slip stream, the sound of sea on skin, slick, sucking, soft.

The spray whispers and whispers the same sad song.

It's not enough, not enough.

It is cold and sometimes he imagines the sea watches back, with wet, luminous eyes.

Remember, remember.

It's too cold, but he doesn't care, watching the sea glide back and forth, he imagines a dark mass amongst darker masses that separates itself and slips back into the sea, hair waving like weed, the smell of salt.

He remembers.

Wet eyed girl, not soft and sad but hard like sea coal washed by the waves, the scent of salt in her green hair, fading to blue at the tips. She seemed to float, above all the detritus, the lagan, her eyes forever on the horizon.

They turned on him.

Promise not to fall in love with me. It's not enough to be loved.

To be seen by day, never by night, by night she was her own creature, out on the shingle 'til her feet bled, to be kissed by the surf.

It was alien to see her, bright beneath the sunlight, fingertips touching, coral smile of serrated teeth, so strange, the calm and safe surface, the raging current beneath.

Did he press his own impressions? His perception his own, manifest in an ordinary girl, a victim of his own overactive imagination? And what was a midnight swim once in a while?

And he promised not to love her, but promises aren't enough when a heart heeds the siren's call.

He followed her that night, saw the moon make her salt-skin glow, her hair dank weed down her spine, and how her shadow ran out before her to strike the sea. For a moment her profile was a stark outline against the star-slit sky, eyelashes sweeping the horizon, did she know he watched?

And then she stepped out of her skin, and into the sea.

In the back of the cupboard is a box of sea-bones; shell, weed, cloudy glass and coal, the collection of weed and shells he found that night where she had been standing, that down on the sands looked so like a drowned girl. He comes every night to the sea limits, he comes back and waits and waits. How could he know he has taken her flesh, her human form, when she slipped away into the sea she can no longer return.

He waits and waits.

It's not enough to be loved, but to be loved in return.

A sailor's fantasy? A murdered girl?

He waits and waits.

Enough, enough, enough.