I must be hot or thirsty or both, because I dream of wanting to swim. My mind conjures up pools or rather a series of large square man-made holes filled with muddy water.
I realise that I’m occupying a different body. This one is in her fifties, short, softened by age. Her middle length hair is dyed brown and slightly wavy, the way aging hair is kinked by the vanishing of natural pigments. The same way that this body is hiding its greying hair under the dye, I’m hiding myself in this body. Hiding means I can do whatever I want. It means I can shed my inhibitions, like I can shed my clothes at the edge of this pool.
I realise too that there is no one else here, except that I feel watched. Perhaps, in case the one watching has sinister intentions, I shouldn’t be undressing or diving in. Instead of being put off by it, I’m spurred on by the tension and dive in, splaying my body over the pool’s mud mounds like a starfish on heat.
For a time, he watches the muddy water slide over my skin and between my grooves, then comes over and offers me a towel. He doesn’t speak and I don’t ask. We walk over to a café, perched nearby on top of a cliff. I leave a trail of wet footsteps behind me, as I walk past people drinking coffee at small tables. A low light streams in through the floor to ceiling windows, while outside grey clouds are brewing over a sinuous ocean.
He says he works as a stunt man and asks if I wouldn’t mind taking our coffees on the balcony. I slide the door open and step out onto the balcony’s metal ledge. Below, the ocean is leaping up at me, trying to touch my naked feet. He stands behind me and takes hold of my hands. He’s in his sixties, shortish and strong, maybe Mediterranean, maybe I have met him before. He has black hair and a face that has lived many lives. His hands are rough, very rough, like sandpaper.
From the balcony, I can see the ocean spilling its body into a hamlet surrounded by tall cliffs. The cliffs are dark and rocky and sharp like razorblades. The ocean isn’t violent or crashing, but rather a heaving mass rolling over itself with foamy white veined crests. It rises and falls, as if breathing.
I know that if I fall, I will die. I want to leave the balcony, but his body is in my way. He won’t let me move back towards safety, instead he squeezes my hands and whispers:
did you know that being close to death is when we feel most alive?
His words ignite me, whipping my body into euphoric spasms that last and last. And I let the waves break over me, as the ocean and I heave together, into nothingness or eternity or both.