River Sing Me Home

by Eleanor Shearer

Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.

Without roots, things die.

She thought of the unnamed children, the ones she had never got to love. The grief for them was different—more like a shadow than a sharp knife twisting in her guts. Was it fair that because they never drew breath, or never took form, their passing hurt less?

So there was something about the passing of a parent. A cosmic weight that shifted onto the generation below. A child could leave the world without a whisper, but a parent’s death made itself known.

And yet, love did not wait. Love was there in the beginning—even before the beginning. Love needed no words, no introduction. Existence was enough.