It is September 2016. I take my glasses off to swim. I leave them tucked in the folds of my discarded dress, follow the softened outline of Lucas’s body down and into the water. I let it form the world for me. Definition is unnecessary in water; fluidity renders mute any firm lines or clear distinctions. The water has its own clarity, one of light going forever down, and a brilliance of deep colour—Homer’s wine-dark sea. I did not understand the metaphor until we arrived and saw it, this water with its surreal intensity of blue. Luminous, the opulence of wine. Lucas dives and tells me that it just keeps going down past the point of view.

The fish are black-and-white striped, blue with yellow tails. The shells on the beach are strangely soft underfoot. They give way like sand, scoop and squeak. From above, walking down, I had imagined them hard and sharp like pebbles. They were colourful, they shone wet and orange in the sun, with the brilliance of tropical creatures. We play with an underwater camera, a new toy, swim past each other, imagining our bodies and the image as something other than the blurred and awkward forms the camera will show. We are like children, trying to imagine what we will become, guessing what the water could make of us.