Dreamlike

It's a short jaunt from your boat across the bay. Take you ten minutes.

Twenty when there's chop.

“Everyone is going to be there!” is what she said. Big dark eyed newcomer.

Dreamlike.

You know you shouldn't.

But...

Dreamlike, you row the dingy. You row and row.

You get lost, somehow.

Pea-soup fog.

The current.

You lose all notion of where land is. Where your sailboat was. Where your wife is. Where your life was...

In what direction do you row?

Forward? Backward? Sideways? Where?

You listen.

What's that?

You don't want to hear what you're hearing. The sound of waves crashing on rocks.

So you row away. Of course you do. You row as fast and as hard as you can as the sound of waves crashing against rock grows louder and you realize.

Everything.

You start saying things like, “You gotta be kidding me!”

Nobody is kidding you.

You are right smack dab on Morgan's Reef.

Right smack dab!

It's just like you're naked from the waist down sitting at your desk in school.

Just like when you run and can't make your legs move.

Like you're falling.

Weightless.

But this time you don't wake before you land.

This time you land.

Ocean water, choppy, cold, and pitch-black, burns your throat like hot vomit.

Comes out your nose.

Now you know where you are. What you've done. Now you know precisely.

You hear your dingy being torn apart on Morgan's Reef.

The sound of a huge wave, just now breaking overhead, gives you one second to dive.

You're down deep and then under and beyond the wave and you swim hard.

Blind. Tired. Gasping for air.

Things like this can wake you up.

Sometimes.


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