We are underwater, not swimming, not moving— just sinking in place, two statues shaped like almost-touching.
The light from above is scattered, a broken language we can’t translate. I don’t know if it’s day or night or if your eyes are even open.
There’s a silence that doesn’t wait to be broken. It’s thick, a velvet hush that presses against my chest like a hand that doesn’t know if it’s trying to save me or hold me still.
I want to reach for you, but I am afraid my fingers will dissolve in the space between us. I am afraid your face will change if I come too close, and I will know you. Really know you.
And then I won’t be able to look away.
We hover like myths, caught mid-thought, mid-movement, mid-breath— but there is no breath. No sound. No heartbeats.
Just pressure. Just stillness pretending to be peace.
If I moved, even an inch, would you move too? Or would I see that you are already stone, that I have always been alone next to the shape of someone almost like me.
And so we stay— motionless, witnesses to each other’s fear, entombed in the endless hush of water pretending to hold us.