Hard River

The photograph is the kind usually discarded because the child you wanted to save forever looked away just then. What is left when the river rises: mud-exposed roots, plastic bags stuck in branches, drowned critter holes along the bank. Because when you reached out to hand him a flat stone to skip, the only thing left was his pair of shoes on the shore. You remember the back of his head, his hair the color of clover honey, his small, bare shoulders square with the water. You remember the river gorge rocks better than you remember his face. And wasn’t his face yours? Did your eyes open underwater, look at the roiling? Did your lungs gulp like gills, invite the river slice by slice? The shoes weren’t really there. But you save the photograph because you couldn’t save the child. You venerate its glossy face in a box locked shut.