Sea dream

The night before last, Leonard and I slept on a single mattress on the floor of my friend's spare bedroom. Having struck my head quite hard on the underside of a piano just as I lay down to sleep, I dreamed that I was swimming entirely alone on a dark sea, way out in the ocean. The taste of cold bitter metallic salt bit into my tongue and lips and burned my nose and eyes. My fingers were long and white and spatulate and the skin on them was soft and sodden with seawater. My legs were entangled in the clinging folds of a long white silk dress and I felt I was moving but I could not move purposefully, in a direction. Beneath me the sea was so deep and dark that I was tiny and alone on its surface. There was nothing else, only sea, swell, salt, foam and black sky. A gull cried out and I woke up, hot and cold and running with sweat, with child's legs draped across my ribs.