Love With a Chance of Drowning

'And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.'
Kahlil Gibran

I love to visualise worst-case scenarios; it's brain food for the paranoid.

All those hours of bored fingers fiddling with a length of rope come in handy.

Everything slips into black when there's no moon, but stars decorate the sky like glitter sprinkled by an excited child. Sometimes the child's hand slips and glitter is spilled in the ocean, creating phosphorescence – bursts of light from hundreds of tiny bioluminescent organisms that flash when the water is disturbed.

Throughout the road trip, I found myself at peace with nature, in love with its solitude and changing beauty.

The sun illuminates the water all the way to the bottom, and I'm watching a small spotted eagle ray gliding just above the sea floor, its elegant black-and-white wings flapping like those of a bird.

A full moon illuminates everything under its neon glow so that, even at night, our anchor is visible on the sea floor twenty feet below.

Our awkward farewells are laced with the knowledge that we might not ever see each other again because that's just how things go in the vagabond world.

It's as though, at any given time, there are alternate universes taking place. We just have to decide which reality we want for ourselves.'

I know I should get my brave face on and check on her myself, but I'm terrified on nights like this, when the moon is blocked and the wind is howling and there is nothing but blackness out there. I'm certain I'll be swept overboard like a flying piece of office paper, propelled into the black void, never to be seen again.