The reality of shells

In our hearts we touch gorgeous, slender lithe fingers lightly together and in our souls, perfect heavenly bodies entwine blithely like they always said we would. Like they always wished they would.

Reality is rarely more cruel and unforgiving, not quite as subtle but endlessly more nuanced. In truth, we don’t fit seamlessly like a palmful of sand in your cupped hand, the way we do when I imagine us. Touches rather clumsy but touching, fumbles rather a foible but sweet. I trip over myself and cling to you for support while you trip over yourself and invariably we end up on the sea floor though staring beyond, into the distant horizon. Amid nervous laughter, trembling extremities, and changes of topic we come back around, eventually, inevitably. Letting the tide gently carry us back around to what’s really on our minds.

In our minds nothing matters except the resonance of the other, resounding pulsing waves crashing onto a naked shore. Our brains almost shut down from excitement and lack of oxygen. Our nerves finally calm and inner peace radiates and materialises through the vastness. For a few fleeting moments in our drowning lives we actually believe that we can know something about the deep and dark and everything that dwells there. We finally know the hollows of these coral reefs intimately.

I would have liked to write a graphically detailed admission of the wonder of our shells, the shedding of our wetsuits, the effortless transition from breathing to knowing, the confident mingling of our scents. But to write such thinly disguised lies would be, not only dishonest and disrespectful, but cruel and unkind to our thoughts. So I don’t really want that at all. I’m resigned to disappear in the seas of our minds, where creatures awful in their beauty swim restless but free.