The River Has Roots

by Amal El-Mohtar

(What is a river but an open throat; what is water but a voice?)

What is magic but a change in the world? What is conjugation but a transformation, one thing into another? She runs; she ran; she will run again.

The river may conjugate everything it touches, but the willows translate its grammar into their growth, and hold it slow and steady in their bark.

the sweep of their twisted crowns, reminds you of something, or someone, you’ve lost—something, or someone, you would break the world to have again. Something, you might think, happened here, long, long ago; something, you might think, is on the cusp of happening again. But that is the nature of grammar—it is always tense, like an instrument, aching for release, longing to transform present into past into future, is into was into will.

there are always things lost in translation, and curious things gained.

Their voice made Esther think of weather, of winter, of woodsmoke: something cold but bright, burning and fragrant, curling into the air before vanishing. They were utterly strange and utterly beautiful, in a way that Esther yearned towards because she didn’t understand it, the way she yearned towards horizons and untrodden secret paths in unfamiliar woods.

She couldn’t put words to the look on Rin’s face. She only knew, very sharply and deeply, that she wanted to go on being the cause of it.

“Bel,” she said helplessly, around the fire in her throat. “Queen of ducks and angels. You shall have poems written to you with a quill on fire. You shall have songs sung to you by enchanted harps. Whole branches of grammar will be invented only to praise you.”

“Ysabel Hawthorn,” she said, and she could not keep the heat from her voice, “demand better than to be worshipped by a crumb.”

I gave my love a cherry that has no stone I gave my love a chicken that has no bone I gave my love a story that has no end I gave my love a country, with no borders to defend

A cherry when it’s bloomin’, it has no stone, A chicken when it’s pippin’, it has no bone, The story that I love you, it has no end, A country in surrender, has no borders to defend

Most music is the result of some intimacy with an instrument. One wraps one’s mouth around a whistle and pours one’s breath into it; one all but lays one’s cheek against a violin; and skin to skin is holy drummer’s kiss. But a harp is played most like a lover: you learn to lean its body against your breast, find those places of deepest, stiffest tension with your hands and finger them into quivering release.

Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.

If the river has roots, it has branches, too; learn to climb them, and find your sister.

And their joy runs together like rivers, like voices, like families.