Aqualung

Walking home at night, the weight of the tank on my shoulder, I'm thinking about partial pressures, and residual nitrogen, and how your mouth resembles a second-stage regulator.

All around me houses are hunched like wrecks at the bottom of the sea, lovers inside groping for each other like divers at 20 fathoms.

Bottom time, you and I once referred to it with sly smiles, but that was long ago, and still there are months of decompression ahead of me.

Now the raw winter wind slices at my eyes so I put on my mask and gaze up at the inverted sky, where an ocean of air ends in breathless space.

Finally I arrive home, and swim inside through a gash in the hull.