After I slid from my mother, they laid me on my belly on a rough white towel, rubbed my pink back with vigor, and said, cry, cry. I did not cry. I held the water in my lungs and grunted my disapproval.

As a small girl, I coughed the water into a glass bowl so I could speak. I hid the bowl under my shirt or in my shoes, sometimes in the tangles of my red-blonde hair. The bowl was thick but fragile, and the water sloshed every time I sighed. My mother wondered why my fingers were damp, but I could only look at her with eyes that asked her to understand.

As an almost-no-longer child, I grew weary of hiding it. I poured the water from a solitary glass bowl into many small jars and pots. This is my water, look at it, I said to strangers, offering up the flat, cool fluid that sometimes caught sparkles from the sun.

But no one cared for my water. Some pretended not to see it, others asked why it wasn't starlight or rose thorns or knobby tire tread. Because it is my water, I said, mistakenly believing this explanation was enough.

So I tried to love my water myself. I poured it into crystal goblets. I spoke to it softly, decorated it with dye in shades of bright yellow and deep indigo, held it in my lap until it grew warm from my touch. I love my water, I lilted over and over in a silver-toned melody. But the water knew my lie; the words refused to ring true, and the glasses never sang no matter how many circles I rubbed on the rims.

Abandoning love, I attempted appreciation and respectful release. I let it nourish a thirsty fern, turned it out to join the sea, gave it up to the hot sun. I mixed it with berries and vinegar and salt to make it into ink, and I wrote and wrote and wrote. No matter how many ways I poured it out, I always held more water inside. It would not let me go.

As an adult, I’ve tried to hide it in my coat pockets and the corners of my eyes, tried to bury it deep inside my throat, tried to stuff it between my knees with a vice grip. I’ve wanted to freeze it into sharp icicles, I’ve wanted to boil it into humid steam. I’ve poked it with my ink-stained finger, told it to do, go, be. But it is only water. Always my water, no matter what.