Memory 2

Once we almost drowned.


We were at Kogelbay. You went for a surf whilst I lay in the shade of a rock drawing pictures in the sand. Students were having a braai further down the beach and I remember the smell of sea and meat, the seagulls circling in the sky, a blood red sun.


You'd been in the water for 2 hours before I decided to go for a swim. I didn't see you getting out and putting your board down, but I remember your hands on my hips and the curve of your mouth when I turned to greet you in the water. Everything faded to blur around you as we drifted about, only partially in this world, mostly in our own.


We were still entangled when I realised that the shore had become a haze in the distance. We tried to swim back but the current kept us in place and the harder we fought the less we moved. (I had had dreams like this before, nightmares of paddling till exhaustion and drowning like a wet leaf.) 


And then: seconds feel like crystal clear hours. I'm drifting above my body and watching the disaster take place.  This is my sticky ending, the way it's going to play out. I reason with God.  Is this how I am to die? Here, out at at sea, am I to lose everything to heavy water and giant sky?


You push me to shore everytime a small wave surges past in the hope that it will be enough to propel me out, but you're tired. We're so far out that the sea is almost a dam. Tears on my face. The sun blinding us. You push again hard and this time I manage to clamber onto a sandbank and catch my breath. But on turning to find you you have disappeared under the water and now I'm waving to the people on the beach, hysterical, hoarse screams muffled by crashing waves.


That day I pleaded with the Universe to deliver you back to me, even if just for a short time. In that moment I knew that I wanted you, that it was real, that it was important. 
I must've been right.


You emerged seconds later and collapsed at the edge of the waves exhausted where I crouched over you and cried like a child as a few bewildered students watched in scattered formation.