River

If Life is falling in a river,

Then comfort is the branch in my hands

That keeps my head above water.

Comfort is the falling foam in mason jar cold brew

That lets me forget, even for a moment,

How much I hate my job.

Comfort is the smell of old books

Masking moribund marriage

Like wet paint over underpass graffiti.

I have begin to suspect,

As fingernails dig into wet bark,

This branch won’t stay afloat forever.

No matter how tight I squeeze, the hug always seems to end.

Eventually one of us has to hang up the phone.

Even on the rainiest of red leaf days, my tea cup steam is a ghost.

What is it about this branch that I believed it could save me?

Who was it that taught me I needed saving?

What exactly am I being saved from?

Look at the River.

She doesn’t seem to mind the way the white water washes.

Unbothered by depth or by current, she goes wherever the bank may bend.

I wonder if this whole time, what I needed most

Was not to hold on to the branch,

But to become the River.

Would it be that bad

To slip beneath the waves

And be carried away by watery hands?

It’s a pretty branch though, so I’ll keep it around.

And my books and my coffee and I

Will sink down to the bottom

And see where the River might take us.