The River Has Roots

by Amal El-Mohtar

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.

they loved each other across the gap between them.