For souls it is death to become water

Epistolaria 2.11 August 2026 / About the project

In the throes of a high, illuminated by a single candlelight, M and I danced to my playlist one summer evening. Eyes closed, limbs loose, we both swayed in our own respective imagined worlds as pop music blasted from our speakers, barely contained within the wooden walls of our tiny home. It was August.

Where are you right now, M asked, an invitation to describe where my mind had taken me. Our arms brushed. A neon dance floor, I answered, my mind's eye looking down at my sandaled feet on vibrant, glowing tiles. Incandescent hues of pink, orange, yellow. I felt sensational, as though the world had narrowed to this moment where nothing mattered beyond the lovely ache in my legs and the rhythm that hugged my hips.

What else? What else; I halted throwing my head from side to side and looked up from the vibrant floor. Beyond this neon grid upon which I stood alone, my mind conjured nothing. There's nothing. Just darkness, I answered simply, for there really was nothing, my imagined world ending at the edges of this square of light. Saying those words aloud – just darkness – seized me with cold terror, as though I had fallen off a cliff and into the cold sea. Once regarded, the darkness, stark against my neon floor, became so palpable, almost corporeal, a physical thing that demarcated the limits of my knowing, and I was terrified of what I'd find if I kept looking –

I quickly opened my eyes, heart palpitating, and locked my gaze onto the flickering little flame like a lifeline. It, too, was surrounded by darkness, but this dark, the dark of our house enveloped in night, was thinner. This was merely the absence of light, a negation; what I had just seen felt like a presence. A thing. It had mass and weight, and if I stared a little longer I was afraid it would reveal its eyes.