Mōrena Kindlingers! Thought I’d give you a name – not sure if it’s quite right but I’ll stick with it for today.

It seems the moon and mercury’s move to turn retrograde has been occupying my thoughts as of late.

I wrote another essay this week about my experience with getting diagnosed with a disorder at eighteen that I don’t think I have anymore… it was an interesting trip down memory lane. You can read it here if you like!

There’s a house close by that a couple of land dwellers built a hundred years ago. It used to sit one hundred metres from my high tide line – but I’ve been reaching for it. Twice a year when the moon’s face is fresh, she leans in to kiss me and my coastlines soar. This year I listened as she recounted all that I’d missed being down here on the earth while my tideline registered the unmistakable touch of the house that was once one hundred metres away for the first time.

The house and its occupants have antagonised me for decades. The ones that erected the structure stayed out of my way. They built the house on stilts should I ever lose control and swam in the shallows sparingly. Their children, when they came, splashed and squealed. Ate the sand and stole shells from the crabs. The sun never seemed to care who he hurt, and I watched him burn another generation of land dwellers.

When they got older, the children looked at me as if I made up a part of their identity. They would steal into the night and cry at my feet. Soak themselves until their chattering teeth forced them to flee. I was a maternal figure, a hand to hold when they felt untethered.

They almost always introduced me when they brought others to the house. I’d met most of their friends before elsewhere, on different coastlines, but they only really seemed to see me here. To entertain them, I’d make curly waves and lap at their toes. Most smiled, some backed away before I could shake their hand. I wasn’t for everyone, I knew that.

The groups became bigger and the introductions less formal. They left bottles and shoes and used-up cigarettes for me to pick up after them. In their wake, the sand was tainted, soaked through with the sweet, colourful liquids they drank. It made me sick; they ignored my gentle pleas to stop. For a time I channelled my anger into dissolving their refuse. One night the delinquency was worse than usual. My temper got the better of me, and I asked one of my children to watch while I looked the other way, furious and heartbroken.

I felt the party enter me before I heard their screams. The Bronze Whaler shark who’d answered my call to stand watch had bitten one of their friends. They didn’t come near me for years after that. Not there. They drove thirty minutes away to another inlet and swam in me there. It was like they didn’t recognise me anymore.

Over water’s lifetime, since I was born, I’d let naivety get the better of me. Every time I was burned. Left to freeze, evaporated, I grew saltier and saltier. I became petty. Small inconveniences left a town decimated. The myriad of aggressors’ faces blurred into a species at fault. I stopped trying to please the animals that roamed the land I’d lovingly carved from rock.

They called it a ‘king tide’, when my lover moon sweeps down fresh-faced and wanting towards me. She times her visits for twice a year. Every king tide I gnawed at the stilts that held their house aloft. If they didn’t want me anymore, I didn’t want them. Eventually my frustration had worn away the coast until the house stood not ten metres from me at low tide. The children, whose friend the shark had bitten, had grown up and brought children of their own. I then watched them grow up and bring theirs. They stopped living in the house on stilts and only came in the warmer months. When they were away, storms let me thrash against the stilts, slam into the windows, and smear salt on the glass to blur their view of me.

The summers got hotter; the ice was melting; I got fuller, deeper. Did they know? I began the millennia-long process of letting go of life as I knew it.

I watched the stilts turn green, then brown, then black. Saw where I’d chipped away it the structural integrity. My depths flowed with more microplastics than organisms. My structural integrity. I’d survive this, but what of the organisms that relied on me – on the coming and going of these tides?

***

The rains came without warning and from every angle. I felt it dimple my surface, coax me on. Long-forgotten grudges returned to me through the torrent – water never forgets. I reached for the house on stilts, took hold of it easily, and shook. The rain found the weak points and snuck inside, shouted instructions back to me knowing I would reward it for helping me. Let it return to me and my vastness.

I broke through the window. Filled the room halfway and retreated again, sloshing, breaking. Took a run up and dived headfirst into the hole I’d made and felt the window frame give way under me. I saw the photos on the walls, the mismatched tables and chairs, the rusted fireplace, the mattresses left to hibernate. I broke it all. I raged.

I tore down walls and slurped out the pink fluffy innards. Threw the kitchen upside down and took nothing but the kitchen sink – water was a privilege. Every tap, bath and basin was mine. I scratched profanities into the bathroom tiles, screamed liquid fury down the phone lines, sullied the linens. Room by room I exacted my revenge. The harder it rained, the better I felt, the house was dissolving with my touch.

I’d bloated so much I nearly swallowed the house whole. I snapped each stilt one by one. Each crack sent shivers through me. They’d miss the ocean that once curled sweet waves to lap at their feet. Behind the house I saw rows more of it. If I’m being poisoned, I’m taking them with me.

And they thought all they wanted was a good view.