I wish to be a river god.

Jealous of daughters, water, sources, my pride. Fabulous horns twisting through my dripping hair.

It would suit me well: lazy, somnambulant ebb, my surroundings roughly etched with evidence of my glacial progress, and a temper that ruins, overwhelms, inundates, erases. My watery eyes already wander through men, women and gods. I am already inexorably driven, like rainwater searching for the sea.

And then I could say that my bed is rich with the silt of my memory of you. I'd gather myself in pools of hungry stillness, quietly sifting the pebbles of your devotion. On my broad shoulders I'd carry away farmhouses, thinking only to lift the weight of your heart from mine. At night my breath will mist whispering your name among the trees.

I'll fan out into the mountains, I'll seep through the coarse soil, I'll brim under the taproots, cresting the feeble riverbanks, beading sweat on your skin, tracing your footprints in glistening bathwater. Because I am water in your hands, I am the clear, fragile stillness held by your cup, I am the trace of wet carrying the salt from your eyes, I lightly cradle your body on my falling tide, I am sweetness welling at your lips.

I wish to be a river god, captive of passion, tempted by hard, unyielding earth, chained to my course by divine decree. If I were all of these things, you would hear hoofbeats in my voice, and the crack of smooth rocks driven in the channel, the stirring of reeds in standing water. And then you might listen.

best,

paulmonster-tiber