3 dec : trying a different form

Prompt: Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

(Author: Ali Edwards)

Fårö, a beautiful limestone island off of another island, Gotland, to the east of Sweden.

A sweet and caressing warm summer's evening in late July.

Five friends on unyieldy heavy rental bikes on dusty, bumpy gravel roads leading past fields and forests and right through rowdy clouds of mosquitoes. The setting sunlight pokes fingers through the pines and hangs in the warm air, in the rising dust.

And I was coughing my lungs out since four days, because on day one of our weeklong vacation I caught a virus. A bad one that decided to evict my lungs from my body. I should have stayed in bed but I hate being alone and I didn't want to miss out. But I filled the dusty air with out-of-control hacking coughs. My stomach was taut and cramped from seizing up day and night. I was so tired. But it's only summer once a year. 


Arrival at the most beautiful stretch of stony beach with sunlight at our backs. The sea and sky are hard to tell apart, being painted in a wishywashy dualtone of pale blue far, far away, looking like an afterthought before the artist left for the day (probably to bike to the sea for an evening dip, somewhere else). It doesn't matter either.

The sea lies flat as a mirror except for where the rough, spiky limestone shelving abruptly stops and hides under the water, at which juncture the sea leaps into the air through holes in the stones and turns into froth in the sunlight. We breathe the briny air and welcome the odd mouthful of local Wisby Pils, colouring our tongues golden and malty for a few seconds at a time. Mine was spiced with the metallic taste of my coughing.

It was agreed that I wouldn't risk anything so they went swimming without me. And my whole being filled with longing, envy and finally just the feeling determination that so-help-me-God I would defy fuck-all and GET IN THE WATER. I needed to be there.

And under the water - my lungs relax. The salt and moisture soothe my entire body inside and out and I stop seizing up. The water's surface skims over all of my skin like a suit zipping up and encloses me in a cool, loving welcome. I feel my smile widening and my temples relaxing. And as I peek through my eyelids, letting the sea water touch but not steal my contact lenses, I perceive shimmery green light, the bilious paleness of my legs, lazily dancing kelp and indecisive fish. Zigzagged silhouettes of my friends and the rhythm of their voices above the surface. And under there, hearing the numbing vastness of the sea hum silently at my ears from every direction, I know then and there that in that spot, it loves me and I love all of it.