I press my face to the bank.
….the mud smears my cheek with vowels.
the water does not say my name,
….but it chews the syllables.
stones shift like vertebrae,
….a spine grinding under weight.
the current drags nails, hair, feathers—
….nothing it takes comes back intact.
a heron waits knee-deep,
….its shadow swallowing the reeds.
I want to ask if water forgives,
….but the cattails split the question.
the river mouths its grammar:
….fracture, silt, dissolve.
my body follows—
….not healed, not erased, just unsettled.
when I rise,
….the sound clings like a second skin.
Kath Healing (they/them) is a queer, trans, disabled, and neurodivergent poet from the UK, now living on the unceded lands of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking peoples (Victoria, BC). Winner of the 2025 Victoria Writers’ Society Poetry Contest, their work appears in PRISM international, CV2, Plenitude, and elsewhere.
