rivers

my house is in a shambles, and past the sunlight outside there is a river of darkness, just down the street from my house. yesterday i walked alongside that river, following it to the playground. i had no children with me, so i sat on a swing and looked around at all the women who had the courage to be mothers.

i sat on the swing and looked at the children, playing beside a river that held every answer to every mystery in this world.

it stretches alongside this sad, sleepy city, like a dark blue ribbon tied around a bouquet of dying flowers.

the snow drifts

embankment, a word that i know means fortress or mainstay, this snow protects me from the earth. snowbank.

the sunlight and then moonlight turn the snow to a dazzling, glittering river of a different kind. the kind that i could bury myself in, rubbing it on my cheeks until the dark-river smell left my skin. sometimes i forget that it is cold.

and once, at that very same park, beside that very same river, the water lapped at the dead grass as the snow melted, and the children played anyway. pieces disappeared and were never replaced, and in the morning, when the world woke up, so did the men who slept in the dirt. and on this day i sat on a bench and waited for the sun to come out

and there was a woman on the other bench, who was there with many children, and as the dark fingers of the river lapped at the swingsets and at the shitty slide, i watched as she was swallowed up by the water. she fell asleep under the clouds, her head supported by one of her hands, and her children played around her, speaking their own language, trying to wake her up a couple of times but they couldn't.

i watched and then walked home, between the cemetary and the river, careful not to get too close to either world.