a dictionary of the sea; part one

She fears that she may be slowly drowning (except that water is no longer in existence.) He holds onto her ever so tight; he has had nightmares that comprise of him crawling around the inside of an old tin box-the rust taking the shape of maps baring cruel seas. She imagines a gang of pirates making her walk the plank. But they are made back-to front and she never quite knows which one is presently abusing her. In his hallucinations he is no longer himself; rather he is a survivor of a ship-wreck that never really happened. But somehow he has found himself eternally alive, (yet dead) at the bottom of a very dark Ocean. Sometimes she deludes herself into the thought that this all happened. Most times though she tries to envisage that it didn’t. His reveries are more trance-like; he hears his own soul commanding him to have courage. They wander from edge to edge on an atlas that doesn’t have a grid.