Shanaiya singh-ali
40 years of tears
The day the pōhutukawa tree fell, I wept. The flowers, once burning bright as a crown of crimson fire, lay strewn like memories long forgotten, fading into the dull grey of the earth. Something was haunting about that moment, as though the earth itself had finally sighed and given in to a grief too ancient to name. I was seventeen when I saw it fall, a child still trying to hold together the shattered pieces of a world that had long since lost its way.
New Zealand was always my sanctuary—at least, it was meant to be. I grew up on stories of a time before; a time when the summers stretched out languidly beneath skies unmarred by the haze of smoke, when the sea sang softly against the shore rather than roaring to claim it. My parents spoke of rivers that ran clear and forests that stood tall, of days when the world breathed deeply and the future felt limitless. But I was born into a different world. A world where the sun was a threat, and the sea an enemy—where the land beneath my feet felt as transient as a dream.
The changes came slowly at first, so slowly that they almost went unnoticed, like the soft exhalation of air before a storm. But soon the signs were too blatant to ignore. The rivers that I once dipped my toes into became thin, their lifeblood drained by a thirst that could never be quenched. The bushfires followed—angry, relentless flames that swallowed everything whole. Entire forests, centuries old, were reduced to ash in a single breath. I remember the smell of smoke clinging to the air, a constant companion to the unbearable heat. It became our new reality—this unending cycle of drought and fire, as though the earth itself had declared war on us.
At school, we no longer spoke of the future in any meaningful way. The dreams we once shared—the ones where we would grow up to become doctors, poets, travellers—felt hollow. We carried on as if the future was still a certainty, but in the quiet spaces between conversations, you could feel the dread settling in. The coastline, once a place of refuge and laughter, was now eroding faster than our words could explain. The sea came closer with each passing year, consuming the land inch by inch. We watched it in silence, too afraid to speak of what we knew: that this was no longer our land. It was slipping away, lost to an enemy we could not see, much less fight.
They told us things could be mended—that the earth could heal, that the rising waters could be stilled. But I didn’t believe them. How could I, when everything around me spoke of endings? The pōhutukawa was my final witness. It stood at the edge of our property, its roots digging deep into the soil as if trying to hold onto something that no longer existed. When it fell, it wasn’t with a crash or a roar, but with the kind of quiet that belongs to loss. It simply ceased to be, and in that moment, something inside me did too.
The rain came soon after—real rain, not the brief, bitter showers we had grown used to. But this rain brought with it no promise of renewal. By morning, the streets had transformed into rivers, the sea having surged forth to claim what little remained of the land. The ocean had arrived—not with fury, but with the slow, patient inevitability of something long foretold. We gathered what we could, though, in truth, there was little to take. The sea had come for us, and we had nothing left to give but ourselves.
Our home was gone, submerged beneath waters that now lapped where my feet had once stood. On the way inland, I saw the twisted limbs of the pōhutukawa, still grasping at the air in defiance, its roots now exposed and useless. We fled to higher ground, joining the throngs of displaced souls—each one haunted by the memories of a life that was no longer theirs. Inland, the world was quieter, but it was the kind of quiet that precedes collapse. Even the mountains, once symbols of permanence and strength, were crumbling beneath the weight of time and heat. We survived, but there was no peace in our survival.
Forty years have passed, and the weight of them sits heavy on my chest. I have become a relic of a world that no longer exists—a world that, perhaps, never truly did. We adapted, but we did not heal. The earth bears our scars, and we bear hers. The pōhutukawa tree is long gone, but I still remember its fall. I remember the sound of it—how it seemed like the end of everything and nothing all at once.
I tell this story now to leave a trace, a reminder. The tears I shed were not only for the tree, nor for the house I lost, nor even for the land that slipped beneath the waves. They were for the futures that will never be, for the lives that were never lived, for the dreams drowned beneath the tides.
Forty years of tears—and still, the ocean rises.
Shanaiya Singh-Ali is an aspiring author from Auckland. She is in her final year of high school at St Cuthbert’s College, and wants to study law at university. If needed, you’ll likely find her in a library, reading every book she can possibly get her hands on.