Go as a River

by Shelley Read

Just as I had stepped into a motherless life, I would step into the life of a mother. I would heed the call of necessity. I would rise.

The pair held truths about my brother, about his impetuousness and rage, but also about some part of him that understood right and how to do it, some part of him that wanted more love than he had any understanding of how to invite.

shoulder. I kissed her forehead and felt glad for her life—so odd and singular, so strangely overlapped with my own—and glad for her death, the only one I had ever known to be correct.

I figured that if my trees could survive, uprooted and against the odds, then, damn all bad fortune, so too could I.

The old house smelled like only old houses do, like stories, like decades of buttery skillet breakfasts and black coffee and dripping faucets, like family and life and aging wood.

Each day, I was building a life of my choosing, and it was a good life. I knew what was missing, but I was also appreciative of what was there.

The new land had chosen to keep me, and I responded with every bit of determination and care that this honor deserved.

But it wasn’t until that moment I’d truly believed that towns could actually be erased from the map, from their own land, that people could be forced out, their homes and livelihoods burned and drowned.

But that day, when Zelda spoke with the frankness of a woman completely at ease with her own troubled past, I was heartbroken for my friend, but I was mostly jealous of her unfiltered honesty, her utter lack of self-blame.

carrying your sorrows all alone isn’t strength, V. It’s punishment, plain and simple. Whatever happened to you, you’ve got to stop blaming yourself.”