I just came down to the ocean to get away from it all, you know. I didn't expect this, and I didn't expect you, or the whale song that keeps me awake and puts me to sleep.

But now that it's started, I don't suppose either of us can walk away.


The food in the hotel - the inn, I guess they call it, is what I'm beginning to believe is fairly standard British cuisine. It's terrible. This entire vacation was a mistake. And if I'd known, I wouldn't have gone down to the beach.

They were telling me ridiculous tales about mermaids even while they were handing me a lantern.


Microfleece doesn't help with the cold, but wool itches, and there's nothing for it. It's better than the inn - you know, I think they've got bed bugs there. I've had bites... oh. Well, you wouldn't know what they are, would you.

I wish you'd wake up. I wish you'd let me go.


I had this boyfriend, a Classics major, who didn't like showing up on time. He had nice hands, but he'd talk about...Yeats? Keats? Somebody. Anyway, he wrote the most terrible poetry for me, but he played guitar. And I was young and stupid, I guess.

He brought me seaglass, anyway, like they were treasures, and I guess I was thinking of him when I picked those two cobalt pebbles that were your eyes out of the sands.

Turns out he, the Classics major, was sleeping with my best friend Sally. He wouldn't have made a good husband. But neither will you.


It's cold here, and your hands smell like seaweed.


Last night I dreamed of you, and I went out walking out to the sea where I heard whale song. When I turned the lantern off, your eyes glowed cobalt in the light of the moon, and you touched me like the Classic's major did.

I can't remember his name, and your name is only something I can say in this language of the deep and the cold water.


So day by day we float here, night by night, and it's cold. The microfleece clings to me like the seaweed of your hair, and your long, spindling fingers hold me close like lovers. Fish nose against my ribs, and the places where the scales are surfacing on my legs and face.

You look like a homeless bum, wreathed in knotted, dreaded hair woven with kelp. You look like a ruined figurehead. Here, in this deep tidal pool none will find, your eyes flicker, restless in the timeless passing of rippling currents. Here, in this deep tidal pool, I curl in closer and closer to you as this thing the humans call minutes and hours and days becomes meaningless.

When I dream, I dream of the cobalt seaglass, and the song of whales in the abysses where we'll soon be bound.