Downstream

October leaves scatter across the creek bed, their edges curled like hands letting go, and the water doesn't mourn—it carries them, turns them over in its patient current, teaches them the grammar of dissolution.

I used to think memory was a thing we kept, something pressed between pages to save. But watching the leaves turn translucent as they sink, become amber light passing through, I understand: we are the water that moves forward, and everything else is what we briefly hold.

A branch catches one leaf, holds it suspended where the current splits— for a moment it could be caught forever, but the branch is temporary too, and the leaf is already becoming part of the river, part of the sound the creek makes over stones it will someday wear smooth.

Even this understanding passes. Already the sun is lower than it was. Already I am farther downstream than I know, and the water behind me carries others, their hands open, their eyes still learning that letting go is all there ever was.