Accretion

The river doesn't rush here— it pools, patient as stone, collecting the day's debris: a feather, ash, the glint of mica.

We are like this too, I think, gathering hours in our creases, each conversation a small sediment layering into who we become.

The light changes and we don't notice until the shadow falls differently across familiar ground, and we realize we're not the same.

What remains is never what we thought we'd keep— not the bright things, but the worn edges, the places we've been bent by joy.