The River Knows

The river has forgotten
every hand that reached into it.

Kings.
Children.
The guilty.
The grateful.

It carried them all
without asking
which story they wished to keep.

I envy that.

I have spent years
introducing myself
through old mistakes,
wearing them like borrowed coats
that never learned my shape.

Perhaps that is why
I come here.

Not because water forgives.

Water does not forgive.

It simply continues.

It teaches another language,
one where nothing survives
by clinging.

The stones know this.

Look how smooth
they have become.

Not because life was gentle,
but because resistance
grew tired before the current did.

Sometimes I kneel
and watch the evening
break itself into silver fragments.

Every ripple
undoes another perfect reflection.

Maybe truth
has always arrived distorted.

Maybe that is mercy.

We spend our lives
trying to become
someone impossible,

untouched,
unbroken,
unchanged,

while the river
keeps making beauty
out of interruption.

A leaf lands.

The whole surface answers.

No argument.

No panic.

Just widening circles
welcoming
what they did not expect.

I wonder
how much of my suffering
has been the weight
of defending a name
that time
has already begun to erase.

The river says nothing.

It has never needed sermons.

Only movement.

Only patience.

Only the quiet courage
to keep flowing
toward a sea
it has never seen.

And perhaps that is faith,

not arriving clean,
not arriving certain,

but letting every mile
carry away
what was never meant
to reach the ocean.