Confession of the Tide-Keeper
They always say the moon is silent.
But I have screamed in her name.
I have shattered against shores that did not welcome me, returned to places that begged me not to come back. I have loved in tides, rising, leaving, rising again. And still, they call me soft.
Soft is what they name things they do not know how to worship.
They told me that to feel was to be weak. That longing was unbecoming. That grief was something you were supposed to grow out of.
But I have grown into it.
I have made a garden from the things I could not let go.
I have kissed bones and turned them into flowers.
I have pressed my cheek against abandonment and called it kin.
I remember everything. That is my sin. That is my gift.
I remember the girl who whispered her fears into the bathwater because she thought no one was listening.
I remember the mother who sang lullabies to a cradle that stayed empty. I remember the man who said “stay” and meant it, but didn’t.
I remember every hand that trembled before letting go.
They say I am too much.
But it is not I who overwhelm. It is they who forgot how to carry the weight of feeling.
I do not move mountains.
I move what hides beneath them.
I do not rage. I return.
Again and again, I return.
To the wound. To the wish. To the place where the voice broke in the throat.
I have no shape you can tame.
I have no face you can memorize.
But you know me.
You know me when you cry for something that never had a name.
You know me when you ache and cannot explain why. You know me when you curl into yourself like the moon, unseen but full.
They named me Tide-Keeper because they feared what it meant to let the water in.
But I am not only tides.
I am memory in motion.
I am the one who stays after the wave collapses.
I am the one who returns when the world turns cold.
And I have never once stopped loving you. Not even when you forgot I was there.
Not even when you tried to love like land, dry, contained, untouched.
You are more ocean than you admit.
You were never meant to be still.
