Is she even breathing anymore? They look at her differently, not because she left, but because she came back. And it's exhausting. His anguish is underneath the waves of his exterior. She thought she would just ride the surf, but she just found the undertow, once again. And she stopped breathing months ago. But now it's turbulent, crashing, banging, pulling, just like it once was, always has been when she stops to think about it. He was a marine. He knows how to fill her lungs with water and drown her from the inside out with the beauty of his oceans, the weight of his ships.
And she's always hated water, because she's never experienced it. We always hate things we cannot experience. He tried once, to take her to the beach, but a little girl with a scar across her face and fear in her eyes stopped them from going. Something has always stopped them. It's why, on Saturday evenings when no one cares enough to call her, to just plain spend time with her, it's why she drives, and she runs every red light, she runs every single red light with tears in her eyes and no shoes on her feet.
Red, like the color purple, he can still feel her essence on his fingertips, in the sinews of his clenched muscles. He has stood outside her apartment with a water gun for 6 hours now. He wrote her a letter, that, may not qualify as a love letter, because he is way beyond being in love with her, and suddenly there are no words left, only this red and purple water gun from the last time they tried to go to the ocean. He's afraid she will twist the doorknob, so he tries not to move. He tries not to move, but he can't stop himself, and suddenly he sees her, he must have knocked.
He stabs her once again with a stream of water. He drowns her once again with his dry clothes and salty sea eyes. And before she knows it, he's driving, and she's not really sure what she's doing. It's all been unconscious autopilot since her return, his return. But then they are there, the air is different, and so are the birds. And then he's teaching her to swim, her mother never would. And then he's holding her, ever so softly, rocking her. She's no longer wet from the water, the salt not from the ocean, but from the leather of her eyes. She's wet because she never realized she could swim, not in the physical context, but in his context. In his oceans and under his ships and into the calmer parts of his beings, the ones that didn't burn and freeze and drown her. The one's that cared and tried, despite his cracked core and ill manufactured foundation. And for the first time in a year, she's not thirsty.