The River

Coming at last to the river he’d written about so often but had never seen, he dips his hand and feels the flow — a strong, velvety tug. If he were to fall in he’d be carried along before he could learn to control it, struggling at first but soon enough relaxing toward an inevitable collapse of his will to survive…

How bad could that be? He’d just placed everything he had carried here onto the bank, after all, where someone could find it if they came looking, and he had made it all specifically to be used — that he may not ever have been the one destined to use them did not mean they were not useful. They would be found eventually. They might lead someone to look for him, or they might not…perhaps they would simply walk off with his things…

Rather than be forever jealous of the use his work might be to another beside himself, he steps in and falls immediately onto his back, is swept along, and noticing a dark rise in the water up ahead, perhaps a hidden rock, he steers toward it as best he can, praying that if he lodges against it it may be enough to hold him back from the roar of the falls ahead, though it may not be, and if no one is watching, if he misses the last chance to catch it and goes on down the stream, all this will be unknown forever, someone will find the things he left behind him and go their own way with them while this worry, this exhilaration, the choice itself, will remain unknown…

the dark rise in the water…

the way it feels, felt, has felt, is feeling…