“The River’s Secrets” by Tiffany Jade Colon, NYC

topic: NATURE medium: text

There were thinks at the bottom of the river.  They told me so.  I believe them.  Most days I walk the mile from home, down the woods to the place where the water kisses the twigs.

The water was dark and dirty.  I could not see past the black rippling surface.  I always wondered.  I would stand, the cold wind whipping my cheeks, making my nose run and turn pink at the tip.  I never felt as though I mocked me.  I know many felt it did.  They were downright angry at the river.  I wouldn’t be surprised if all the river has ever seen is shaking fists and wagging fingers.

“It knows.” they would say.  Some had dark eyes; others had heavy weights on their backs.  What it is the river knows, they never say.

I figured the river’s silence might have something to do with those fingers people have been wagging at it.  So one day I cut the weeds that had grown around one of the small rowboats lined at the mouth of the river.  It bobbed loose and waited for me.  I stepped in slowly, almost afraid, but not quite.  The kind of anxiousness you feel when doing something that feels dangerous but isn’t actually so.

I grabbed hold of the paddles and rolled out slowly a little ways, just out to the center of it.  Then I pulled the paddles up and sat there humming a tune to cut the silence pushing pressure in my ears.  For good measure, I reached out a hand and stroked the water twice.  It rippled far but slowly, as though taking it in and enjoying itself.  Maybe it was a wind in the trees, but something sounded a lot like a sigh.

After a bit I paddled back.  The water seemed to guide me, to offer me back up to land.  I walked home slow, feeling lighter.  As though I knew something I didn’t before.  But I had no words for it.

Author Tiffany J Colon