in which the fish swims in the dark

In the dark autumn morning, there is only starlight:
high on the rockface I see a disembodied face glow blue, move about and disappear. A flickering ghost, up on the cliff.

But no, it is the boy who climbs there very day before dawn. I see in the velvety dark monochrome the pale sharp angle of his bare legs, as he sits with his knees to his chin
in a cleft in the rock above me.

Below him I tread, arms out, trustingly through the dark surf, feeling my way with my feet so slowly.

I wonder what the boy is doing, gazing out to sea each day in the dark?
Perhaps he is thinking of a love far away, separated yet connected by the ocean between them.
He flicks open his phone and I see his face light up blue again, briefly before he disappears.

He must be watching me tread blindly through the waves at the bottom of the cliff.





There is no light on the rock platform, none at all, just the great dark shapes and the pale invisible glow of the water: I launch myself so silently horizontal across the surface of the rockpool. The clouds of phosphorescence which burst from my moving hands in the blackness
mirror the clouds of stars in the sky.




I move across the water, and look at the vague shapes below, my feet remaining level with my head: I wish not to tread upon the fat soft octopus who lives here,
the blackfish still asleep in their holes. I look at the stars.






I dream along with the boy and our combined thoughts tangle across the surface of the water: go, I say to my dreams: go!
Speak of love, all along that dark horizon, and even further still.