The Sediment of Silence

There is silence in a river, yet it is not empty.

It is the stillness after an identity is not spoken. It is the quiet after a trauma is witnessed and left alone. It is the thickness that settles when a question is met with turned faces, with eyes finding the ground.

The river flows from us.

There are stones on the bottom, sharp with what was swallowed, heavy with what was left unsaid. A father’s warning that never became a word. A mother’s grief that vanished. A brother who heard the door and let it close. A neighbor who saw and chose not to remember.

The river flows from us.

This is burial. Not in earth, yet in water, each omission dropping, each refusal sinking, each secret sifting down into the coldest of silt.

The river flows from us.

Generations stand on these beds. They plant crops and dig wells and drink from currents clouded by what their ancestors could not bear, would not speak.

The river flows from us.

Somewhere a child stands at the bank, searches the shallows for what glints, and finds only water thick with silt and old silence—the truth buried beneath layers, pushed down by the force of centuries.

The river flows from us.

There are no innocent hands at the water’s edge. Only those willing to wade in, to disturb the sediment, to bring up what others let rest.

The river flows from us.

There is a heaviness that cannot be washed away. Old lies made into stones, old identities lost among the pebbles, old prayers lost in the dark channel.

The river flows from us.

We inherit the silence of those who stood before us. We add to it with every unspoken word, every glance away, every breath held until the moment passes.

The river flows from us.

And what is buried is not lost. It directs the current, it claims the bottom, it waits for a season of flood, when the river will turn and reveal what no one wanted to remember.

The river flows from us.