The ocean holds me, nourishes me. I reluctantly pull myself onto a rock, slippery with seaweed. 

Clouds have moved in since this afternoon, but as they are hurried along, I can feel the sun warming and evaporating the beads of that my mother decorates me with. Gulls scream high above me, and the breeze tangles my hair.

Even though some of my family are silent, I am not. Like the gulls, I feel compelled to sing my truth, the longing overcoming me until it feels as though it must burst through from my heart to my throat.

I have heard stories that land-dwellers tell about us. Our songs seep into their hearts, as wetness always will to sand or rock, and yearning overcomes them.  They imagine that what they feel is the urge to procreate, and envision us as the fantasy being they would find most desirable to be with, to lie with, to possess and be possessed by.

Our mother is soft and flowing, liquid and changeable. The mother of the land-dwellers, sister to ours, is solid, loving them in her dark, firm, dense way, but they don’t notice the way she supports their feet, so they think they need to look for something else.

Water pursues itself. Two droplets of rain reach for each other, seeking to merge. The liquid that even land-dwellers are made from thirsts for our mother, even as the stone and mineral of them wants to stroke hard ground. 

It is the way of things. To live is to desire what cannot be obtained, except for a brief instant.