What the River Carries

The river does not mourn what it carries— only moves, only bends around the broken teeth of stone.

A blue heron stands in the shallows like a word someone almost said. The current continues past it, past everything.

My grandmother's hands were rivers too, always touching, always going somewhere I could not follow. She left the way water leaves a glass— not gone, but changed.

Now I find her in the cold skin of an October morning, in the way light arrives without asking permission, flooding the low places first.

The river does not grieve. It only opens at the mouth into something wider than itself, salt and patience, the long work of arriving.