sometimes it is better to not say.

"i was frightened 

by my fearlessness 

to drown in everything"

...

so you changed your number who's calling

If I have gotten to know any river, it would be the river of mud and clay where fish died on its bank every year and we could still wade in ankle-deep and catch crayfish and I almost always fell in but when you are five six seven eight that is okay wet pants are not a problem, I remember crayfish murky between river grass and water spiders we could skip stones forever but I couldn’t really skip mine all of the time just my dad, laughing as his went further, as his skimmed the river tops and the dog my dad’s dog splashed and swam and crawled up the banks even as they crumbled we did that, too, crawled up and down the banks and built forts in the ravine that tumbled down to the river it was always a race to the bottom a race along the edges we caught frogs and played with matches and my uncle would push me on the swings and we’d sit in that big metal cage pretending it was a spaceship pretending we were going to go really far, we were going to fly the hell out of there but in the end, we always came back to the river, it was our center, and I would get my feet wet climbing to a tiny island I found, I would go by myself and I would climb through the reeds and pretend I was on an adventure, pretend I was writing a poem, pretend I was all alone in my own country far away from dad’s who said playing in the ravine alone/without him wasn’t allowed who tried to take away all of the things a river brings, like mud pies and swimming, like new pets for home and birds, like things to take pictures of and talk about, we’d slap sticks on the water and walk against the current up to our waist to feel dangerous and strong but it really wasn’t that deep and the dog was always there, anyway I always thought she’d save me but she was still my dad’s dog so who knows - there were lots of trees on the banks some of them had roots that left land looking for better places to live and then had given up, half way across and the best part about the river about any river is that the water is always moving there is nothing still about it and anyway, later we left grew up in a different city surrounded by water but where definitely most definitely you could not wade in and my dad’s dog died so it seemed unlikely that, after all, that he might ever call us again, now that we were living in a different city with a different river, one that had smoke stacks and blue collars piled on all sides and anyway, all the men around me had pitbulls with chokers and because my dad’s dog was half-pitbull I already knew there wasn’t anything there to be afraid of so at least I had the dogs and that almost seemed like it could have been enough, I could hold them and touch their fur and they seemed nice and they mostly liked me and I had seen pitbulls before so what did I have to be afraid of?