I am calling him down, to come back to me, please come back to me, but my words are muffled by water and the current is drifting him away and the creatures of the deep are swimming around us, oblivious as they dart in and out of the sodden timbers

the floating net curtains, tentacles trailing like colourless ribbons, are Sea Wasps; shoals of Clupeid Fry are electrified flying nails recruited from all the fallen doors and creaking floorboards of this house

the weird colony of yellowy sac-like Sea Squirts resembles the tapioca pudding delivered by Meals-on-Wheels, which he hates and always leaves

on the floor are piles of fresh diarrhoea, the Sea Cucumber, which I sometimes have to scoop up for him; it eats sand, in the hope of finding edibles inside

the luminous pink wisps of the Sea Slug, the violet-tipped polyps of the amorphous beings of the living coral

then we enter the dark zone, the cold zone, the abysmal abyssal plane, I try to catch him, but he is lost to me now, as he disappears over the top of the largest mountain range in the world, beneath the continental shelf in the forbidding basin, his wasted legs paddling as his brown corduroy slacks fall down, his feet limp and crusty at the heels

I am no anchor; he is supposed to be mine, he is going, going …

and I am left only with the creatures of the deep that I watch on videos late at night when I can’t sleep, because I can lose myself in their magical world for hours

here mouth ulcers hover in the water like Christmas baubles with brilliant lights radiating from inside

unused condoms twirl around in a strange ballet with ET eyes, with a ballerina’s swirling tutu skirt of red skin for a behind, bought when he imported a woman from home, a ‘pen pal’ who never wrote once she left this house

here there are beings that need no hard protective skin because there are no solid surfaces; his brain cells are afloat in alcohol, creatures whose skeletons show like X-rays beneath a layer of fragile transparency

they are looking for prey; I am praying for him

and then he drifts back down, through the ceiling, head first like a deep sea diver, arms at his side, feet flapping, and finds his way back into his armchair, bubbles coming out of his nose, and he picks up a can of beer and pours its remains into the dirty mug that reads:

40 YEARS – PEARLINE & CLASFORD – RUBY

He lights a cigarette as if he’s been nowhere, nowhere at all, and suddenly, noticing the look of exasperation on my face, he snaps, ‘Is all I’ve got left.’

‘But it’s so bad for you. It’s killing you.’

‘Doan be ridiculous. Nuttin’ no wrong with it. Doan believe the papers. Go get my supplies, son.’