By Zoe Brönte Faulkner
I’d say it must be something in the water but we are too far away now to feel the ocean’s pull. We stand on cigarette butts instead of sand, I have nightmares of the rats in the alley crawling inside. I miss the tide. I grow pale and parched, it’s symptomatic. In the evenings I shower as if waiting for the water to absorb and fill me up like a sponge. It never does. I have faucet eyes. Now that our drains are blocked I worry I might flood our red-doored vessel. When pennies appear on my bedroom floor I insist I must be dreaming it, our house certainly isn’t made of marble and nobody is wishing on it.