It is only of late that I have come to believe we really never know ourselves until we have reached a place of complete unknowing. Until we have lost ourselves to utter strangeness. It is then that the true nature of who we are surfaces, and we are faced, perhaps for the first time, with our deepest strength or our sharpest weakness.
Oh, Sweetheart, the days are growing shorter, but the white sky of October daylight seems endless sometimes. You knew this season would be chaos for me. As soon as the leaves began to tarnish, my dreams of that dark world beneath the sea started. I woke the morning of the solstice with my hair dripping, and my skin soaked. Of course, my first thoughts were of you, and what this season had wrought years earlier.
Remember you used to send me postcards of the villages you traveled through? All of them held the sea as a backdrop, your blue highway. I have hundreds of these testaments. So it was for years that you were holy, and could walk on water, but in the end you had not the physical strength to overcome the vicious storm that could not be tamed. For weeks after, the shoreline coughed up curios from the dead. Tangled, faded and sullen. I recall a woman's satin gown moving slowly up and down on the water's surface, easing little by little toward the sand. What a grim specter the dress was, empty of flesh and blood, but waving as a flag of surrender does, like a warning to all of us who watched it in silence.
Every night this week I have swum in those violet and turquoise shadows, with the unblinking fish peering out at me. The broken china that had once reflected candlelight and smiles was smooth as river stones, and the forks and knives were like charms that had come loose from Neptune's wrist. Each room was furnished with bright, sharp coral, and the windows swirled with a stifling darkness. There was no moon. No moon coming to shine into them, ever. Can you imagine how cold and removed these spaces are? Of course you can. How everywhere there are ghosts of what had been, and what was never to be again. There, at my bare feet, lay a stranded violin, its melody muted forever. And yet, though I have woven in and out of the sprawling wreck, the bow, the warped oak cabins, I could find no sign of you. One morning soon after I was clutching a scallop shell, and there were tendrils of seaweed on the pillow. The sparkle of seawater was sticky on my arms and between my breasts.
But this time, this year, it is different.
Just as the landscape is now turning on itself, shedding the skin of summer, I too am undergoing the transformation which no one, but the insane, would believe. Did you know I would separate from the terra of earth to the nether regions? Were you aware that humanity, with your absence, would become a strange and lonely thing? After the wreck I looked every evening for a bottle on the shore, but none would come. I imagined that in those last few moments you would've written a message to me on anything you could find, and that you would've hurriedly emptied a wine bottle and shoved the note inside, believing as I believed, that it would find its way to me. Yes, it may have been carried off for years in another direction, but eventually, like all things that truly matter, it would find its way.
I have not left the house for days, and the leaves continue to congregate on lawns, and wherever there is a space to be found. They have almost all leapt from their former positions, and they lay, slowly turning pale like dancers who can no longer go on.
How did Venus rise so easily from the foam, ready to conquer the hearts of men, and so The World?
I noticed at once that as I grew increasingly agile in the underworld, the more stiff my limbs became when I was awake. A curious pressure persisted in my thighs, and the skin there thickened, and I knew before that night was through it would yet be rough to touch. I have let the sea glass rattle at my wrists, and have not removed the tiny shells, and marine vines from my hair, for they are tangled securely, and now I believe they belong there. My limbs ached horribly. It was as if my legs were being pulled southerly, and I could not, for all the world, stop what was happening. My strength was reserved for the hours after sleep, and the long deep breaths I was learning nightly.
Yes, it may be true that this starless search may yield nothing but skeletons, and remnants of humanity, but what is life after all, if not these things?
This season will close and another will move in. And though I am melancholy, as a bird must be at the onset of a broken wing, I am also noticing the beauty of certain things. For instance, the colors and textures of my skin. There is a glistening as I have only seen in fresh snowfall. Shades of a meadow that reflect an indigo sky. My torso and legs are nothing short of majestic. If you could only witness this, for to see it singularly leaves it unreal.
Tonight I must go, and just to prove to the gods that I am not afraid, I will go to that place where I nearly drowned when I was 9, and I will move with grace toward the wreck. I always thought it ironic, that it is named the Pacific. A word calm and even as a lullaby.
And I am ready, Sweetheart, to leave Limbo behind.