The River

She wants to tell me something, I can tell from the cadence of her whispers. There is something unfamiliar in the way the air between and around us is charged with possibilities, how I feel lit up and electrified. After all these years, she still finds ways to surprise me. She offers up her gentleness, the easy to miss tenderness she often keeps tucked away, in the way she reaches out softly, reminding me how important it is that I listen, when I am here.

This summer, there are only seven youths with me, and we all hear the emptiness of the unspoken “eight” when we count off. Though no one has mentioned it yet, I can feel the number catching at the backs of their throats, a hot sting of emotion pressing on the corner of an eye. No one speaks of it, and I cannot fathom speaking into the silence where his voice should be, so we hold it, each time, a moment of perfect absence.

A week ago, lying in bed with my lover’s arms wrapped around me, I promised myself and her that I would name the loss. That I wouldn’t teach our young folks a lesson that grief is too much to hold, too unbearable to speak its name, that our history is full of absences and erasures. I said his name, invoked it with love and my trembling voice, daring myself to realize that I would not fall to pieces, and if I did, I would find a way to gather myself up again. She has taught me well, that we are always moving.

In the years before, there was always a new group, with one returnee (two in the year I couldn’t bring myself to choose). Anyone who got a second trip swore an oath to let the magic unfold for the newcomers, to honor their own discovery by watching it slowly reveal itself in signs and shadows. This year, for the first time, there were no newcomers; we all went back -- almost all of us went back.

Every summer for six years now, they have come, bodies in all shades and shapes, brown tones in their skin singing back a praise song to the dirt and rocks and trees we pass through. Away from everything and everyone else they know, their limbs loosen, shoulders unhunch, lungs expand to full sail, wrists recall how to turn, flip, toss.

Every summer, I bring them here, and she welcomes them all. As they first set foot into her rushing waters, she grants a cool kiss against the skin over their calf muscles, reassuring them with the clarity of her power. There is a beauty and truth in sharpness, and she has no choice but to show them, immediately; no one who has been around for this long can hide such power, and nor does she have any desire to.

She is simply herself, always flowing and rushing, carrying along whatever we offer her, pulling it away and down the river, to another part of herself where she takes and smashes and destroys, reminding us that everything terrible cannot last forever.

Against the heavy rocks that she holds in her bowels, the ones that will wear down overtime to smooth edges, softened and polished by her relentlessness, that is where she does her work.

All the years before, I have told the stories of her magic, inviting each tongue to unloose secrets, to share what they heard in the babbles and the torrents. On the second or third night or afternoon, when I feel they are ready to hear her message fully, deeply. When I know they have seen how she behaves, how they themselves are stilled in her rushing presence, by her constancy, the solidity of her presence. We sit away from her, far enough to show respect, close enough still to hear her constant song.

They watch the way she shifts and babbles, whispering back her affirmations as they unleash their secrets, release their darkest moments, one by one, into her depths. From her shores, she holds them, shows them her power, reminds them that something magical and unchanging will always remain.

Last year, I did this. Asked them to offer what they carried to her to hold. I saw him do it; each summer, I happen upon the moment for at least a youth or two. I have trained myself not to expect it, not to seek out these offerings, but she calls to me, a playful splash of water, a sudden rush of quiet, and I will turn my head in time to see the instant of transformation.

I watched his release, the way he breathed his pain and fear and hope into her. I received the moment. Held that magic all through the fall, into winter, had it glowing like a spark still when I saw his face scrolling across my newsfeed. His sweet, sad eyes, his beautiful self-won name preceded by a hashtag, an obscene crosshatching of lines.

He gave her everything to hold, and still he carried too much.