Go as a River

by Shelley Read

If this makes you wonder whether the joys and pain of a place wash away as the floodwaters rise and swallow, I can tell you they do not. The landscapes of our youths create us, and we carry them within us, storied by all they gave and stole, in who we become.

I was a girl alone in a house of men, quickly becoming a woman. It was like blossoming in a bank of snow.

The irony did not escape me that the entire country held its breath for just three men while dozens died every day fighting a war no one understood.