How the River Flows

As the time passes and as this river flows on by, the days are marked by how the river flows. Sometimes it is full and heavy; the waters churned muddy brown as the river hurries by eager to get on, needing to get to the sea. Then there are the slow days when the river seems uninterested in going anywhere, happy to spend the day with you, letting time pass with no real need to be anywhere at all. Then there are the hot dry days when the river seems hardly here at all, as though it has grown tired of the same routine and gone off elsewhere, just leaving the barest memory of its passing, the dry banks either side of it.

The days here are like the river too, matching its moods: frantic days, slow days and days that hardly seem to be here at all and leave no trace on the memory. She – when she was here - was like the river too, with her wild days and her calm days, days filled with all the possibilities and days when even walking down to see the river's mood seemed too much for her.

Now she is gone, there is a drought and all I have are her absences to remember her by, the marks of her passing by she left on the landscape of my life, like that dry, cracked ground over which the river used to run before it all dried up and she went away.