at night

If I swim deep enough I can breathe water. It’s lighter down there, airier, if I can just make it.

At the bottom the visibility extends a hundred miles and the sun, descending beneath the surface, is a fiery glow illuminating the bright, clear ocean straight to the horizon.

Ahead in the distance, near the setting sun, a kelp cactus rises like a mountain, formidable as a castle tower. Its siren call sounds through the empty ocean, and if I start early and swim long enough I can reach it.

Or I can always drop down to the reef below, a great rectangular formation fifteen feet high and hollowed out in the middle with bright bare sand. If I swim all the way down I can breathe and glide and swoop across the open sand, grazing easy pebbles with my chest.

But sometimes at night I drive twenty hours for a week in the ocean, and plans change, the weather stinks, one thing leads to another and suddenly I have not gone out once and it is the last day, the last hour – it is minutes before I have to leave. The desire to strap on my gear and head out is an asphyxiation, but I cannot, I have missed it, I have lost my last chance.

I cross bridges bathed in blue, knowing that stingrays are gliding out there, sea urchins dotting reefs with tickling spines, fish twitching to hold position in the surf – and I am on a road, in a car, going away.

If only …