How long does loss last? is a question that surrounds me as I suddenly wake up under the sapphire waters of the Mediterranean sea. I am trying to hold my breath but I know that the breath-hold breakpoint is approaching. All is blue under the weight of this ancient water, even the sunlight that reaches here from the sun that is as far as God is a shade of IKB. It will all enter into my lungs soon, all of the sea will be inside my body, fish will swim inside me nibbling at the tissues of my stopped heart, cacti will grow inside my veins where blood would clot into blue, does blood clot under water, is it water that I am under or is it some other liquid still unknown to earth, could it be a sea on Mars that I am drowning in, am I even drowning, do I understand this well, maybe I just do not understand anymore, my love, the difference between solid and liquid, I am drowning in a solid mass of blue, my love, give me your hand, I am being buried in the core of the earth that I never knew was blue, where is the fire, the heat, the molten mercury, where is hell, my love, this is hell, hell is blue matter cutting off oxygen, this is the loss of a great love, it feels like that time between suffocation and death

 Three minutes.

 “Asphyxia from from Greek asphyxia “stopping of the pulse,” from a- “not”  + sphyzein “to throb, to beat violently,”

Loss lasts for three minutes that go on forever.

…
Saudamini Deo is a writer and photographer from India.