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Acqua Alta

Mike Sneed

The glow of the fallen sun fades in reds, yellows and fierce blues. The bell tower of San Giorgio Maggiore is only a silhouette. The wind picks up off of still water and sprays a mist across his cold blue face. If only he could still feel the water bead on his face and how it cools the soul after a long day. The days are longer now and he doesn’t speak much. He hates the scars on my wrists.

The night falls over us and still he sits in silence watching over the abandoned city. He dangles his feet out of the bay windows of our first floor flat. His toes just reach the water now. I pour us each a glass of wine and sit next to him.

“The water is higher today,” he says to me in a low sullen voice.

* * *

I knew the first night he didn’t return that something had happened to him. The waters off of Lido were much more violent then. The rising temperatures brought rising waters and bigger storms brought bigger waves and soon we found ourselves in the eternal winter we once thought impossible. I could see him shivering in the moonlight low, freezing wet matches so they'd strike, silent in a narrow canal to shield the fire from sight.

I could feel them watching me. I could sense their coming. I could smell their evil desires and their thirst for the flesh of a woman.

I remember drifting to sleep, the moon reflecting off the tiles, the warmth of the bath water and how the wood smoked under the tub and filled the room. He shook me awake, his frozen blue arms jerking my pale white body, submerged in a sea of red. “Why?” he had screamed, “What have you done?”

“I had no choice,” I had whispered in his ear, his head hanging low towards my chest bobbing in the water as the air flooded my collapsed lungs.

He hates the scars on my wrists.

* * *

“Let’s go for a night swim,” I say, though I know the answer is always the same. He won’t touch the water other than a wetted foot. He still tastes the wine—the essence, the life of it—as it caresses his lips. I place my lips on his but he doesn’t taste me now. I may be dead to him, but he still lives in me. “Come on, the water is still now.”

“Tomorrow the water will be higher,” he tells me like he does every night.

“I know. The water is dirty. This water is dead,” I say in a somber muted tone, wishing he would forgive me. The scars chill and warm the same when my fingers trace the veins. “I think I’ll draw a bath.”

Based on Claude Monet's San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk, 1908
Bridgestone Museum of Art

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