where the river keeps me

there is a way the river breathes that feels like my own lungs learning how to exhale, like it has been waiting all this time for me to sit at its edge and simply listen. i do not just love the river, i am woven into it, tangled in its reeds and caught in its current in a way that feels like both surrender and awakening. the water knows my secrets before i speak them. it takes the heaviness from my chest and sets it drifting, spins it into whirlpools until it dissolves into something smaller, softer, less dangerous. there is no judgement here. no need to prove myself worthy. i can arrive as i am—messy, unpolished, a little broken—and the river opens itself wider, as if it has been waiting for my shadow to fall across its skin.

the sun scatters gold across the surface and the light bends in ways that feel holy, though i do not pray. the wind tangles my hair and carries the scent of earth and rain into my bones, and i swear it changes me—cell by cell, thought by thought—until i feel less like a person and more like something wild, something grown instead of made. there is a rhythm here, slow and certain, that pulls me from the noise of the world and tucks me into the quiet between heartbeats. it is not empty here; it is overflowing. overflowing with the sound of water folding over itself, with the distant call of birds stitching sky to horizon, with the way the banks hold their shape yet still give themselves to the tide again and again.

i think about how many times the river has watched me leave and still welcomed me home. how it holds a mirror to the sky and never grows tired of the reflection. how it carries pieces of everywhere it has been, yet always remains itself. i ache for that kind of knowing, that kind of rooted freedom. maybe that is why i keep coming back—because here, i remember that it is possible to be both grounded and untamed, to flow without losing yourself.

sometimes i imagine that if i were to press my ear to the river’s heart, i would hear my own pulse inside it. maybe that’s what love is—finding the place where your edges blur into something larger, something that will carry you even when you have no strength left to swim. i leave pieces of myself here each time, and i take pieces of the river with me, tucked somewhere deep and unshakable. even far from its banks, i carry the song of it in my blood, a low and endless hum, calling me home.

i do not just stand at the river’s edge—i dissolve into it, become part of its song, let its current braid my spirit into something freer, wilder, softer. the river is not a place i visit. it is the place that lives inside me, the steady, endless proof that love can be both fierce and gentle and still last forever.

with ink + bloom, 🌻