Her Watery Confession

It is said water has a memory.

I could never forget her, even though it had been a long time since her last visit. Her toes tentatively dipping in. The polish, a fitting aquamarine with the largest nail on her right foot, chipped.

I lapped quietly at her ankles. Waiting for her inevitable confession. Things must have been good for a while. The stretch between her visits having grown with time.

But no matter how long she stayed away, I knew it would not be forever. She belonged to me like I belonged to her. A part of her soul. A connection she could never experience with anything or anyone else.

The first time we had met, at the very beginning, I was drawn by her shrieks as I rolled in tiny waves towards her equally tiny toes. The way she propelled herself closer only to turn and giggle like we were playing a children’s game of tag. Which, in a way, we were.

When she had her first swimming lessons a few summers later, the determination on her face was unforgettable. She would practise and practise. Her slight arms breaking my surface in time with shallow gasps of air.

Her teen years were when things became more trying, the sunglasses hiding the dark circles under her eyes. She would drive in all seasons, the consequences of skipping be damned in order to sit on the shore. My tiny waves no longer made her shriek but calmed her. A constant she could breathe in time with. That was when it had truly begun.

She began coming to me to confess. Things she whispered she had never told anyone else. Her tears dropping one by one bringing their own salinity to mix with mine. I, her safe space.

Her twenties brought with them freedom, wild stories of nights out and spending time with her limbs intertwined with another. She told me of her visits to far-off shores whose turquoise waters paled in comparison to mine. Of love and undeniable loss, which pulled on her already parched soul.

We both knew a day would come when she would give herself to me. She had promised to, after all. And she was not one to break a promise. I had been patient. But I still thought she would keep me waiting. That her skin would have begun to sag and her hair white. She would be beautiful then, but was the most beautiful she had ever been now.

It had arrived and her final confession was with her body.

Stepping in without hesitation, I lapped at her toes, submerged her ankles and floated the frill of her dress slowly up past her knees. It made her look like a flower bobbing across the surface. I drank in her waist, her breasts and finally her neck. Her hair shimmering in the late afternoon sun.

Laying back, I cradled her, savouring the inevitable, probably for longer than she appreciated. She rolled onto her stomach to face me and I tasted the bubbles leaving her lips. Her hair fanning out along the surface, causing never ending ripples.

Sinking slowly, as the last of the air left her lungs, I looked into her eyes, unblinking, and fully wrapped myself around her. With a gentility just for her I laid her down on the sandy bottom, a soft cushion as the reeds laced her fingers and weaved through her hair. Finally, resting in peace. Finally, at home with me.

It is said that my waters are haunted. That a woman with dark waves walks upon the shore, enticing visitors by an invisible current. Who appears to become one with the water. But no one has ever found her and doubtfully ever will.

For she was my first, not the last, but the only one I will ever truly love.