I reach out. Nothing. The air whistles over my fingers, like icy cold feathers. I stretch my arms up high, I feel every inch of the water pressing down on me. I look around as the water laps against my neck; I search for the shoreline I swam from. Not that I am planning to swim back; I will keep floating and breathing until the sun goes down. The sea is flat but I can’t see the horizon anymore; and even if I tried to swim back I wouldn’t know which direction to go.
It is silent. Cold and silent.

I take a deep breath as the water drags me down, my hair tangling around my face like seaweed; my clothes floating around me as if I were floating in the sky. I feel like I am floating. My eyes are open as I fall beneath the surface, and I imagine I can see everything; fish, coral seaweed, reefs, colour, light and wonder. But my eyes are blurry and all there is below is a few hundred metres of water.
The sea pushes me up again and I try to clear my eyes to look at the sky. The crimson sunset reflects off the water, mirrored all around me like a sea of colour. I am floating in the sky; free; happy.

I think this is what I was looking for. If only I could freeze this moment and stay here forever, in this half-word somewhere between darkness and light; in the grey space between life and death.

The waves begin to roll. I watch them sweep gently across the flat plane of the ocean, and imagine them crashing onto the empty shores.
I am tired. My legs hurt. My arms hurt. My lungs hurt and I hurt. I can’t keep swimming forever.
The sun dips lower, kissing the sea as it slowly disappears below the horizon, leaving a thousand brilliant colours in its wake.

I am tired. I reach up to the sky and try to grip the darkness as it descends; something to hold on to. My hands close around nothing as I’m pulled under the blanket of waves, and my lungs fill with water.