Soliloquy of a Riverfall

Soliloquy: my soulful sentiments surrendered to sediment surfaced again during a recent dream: A dream, narrating the past, stared me in the face, daring me to dive deeper, collecting the buried gems of his lapis lazuli, his eyes, and a Bostonian offset accent that once accentuated my being into believing is seeing. Instead, it all sank, a slam dunked trunk, treasures sinking in a river. Riverfall, the falling water, a place where adventure, stolen kisses, and laughter drowned with such power, much like its real place of origin- Fall River, his hometown.

He showed me that place, once a 19th-century textile manufacturing center sourced by the Quequechan River. It felt like fate to an eighteen-year-old me. Hazel-eye girl (tiger's eye stone equivalent) meets blue-eye boy, lapis lazuli, two gems of chance, youth and romance, but never did I realize, it would be so fleeting. A past life encounter washed over my being. Floating on recollections of a once before, blinded me to present time reality, when an abrupt exit, lacking a considerate explanation, left me drowning in the effect of his affect. A dredging river cried, "Falling water," and my sorrow drained the riverbed dry.

Life went on, time went by, and I buried his memory, returning all to sand, silt, slate, and sludge. But a recent resurrection, the retired reticence of a non-respondent prayer, resurged my memories, surfacing in another river: The Hudson.

Soliloquy: self-talk, the words I never got to tell him and likely never will, tread water in the Hudson. I imagine if I could send him a bottled message, it might find its way to him, despite two distinct geographies, two distinct flows. A long time ago, potential love, now lost at sea, makes me think of the Atlantic, the eventual place where Quequechan and Hudson empty. Different places, different routes, different timing. Over romanticized, perhaps, but flowing emotions, the treasures of my heart's innermost resource, have outsourced lapis lazuli and tiger's eye, stones thrown back into a river, skipping among hopes, wishes, and yesterday's dreams.

Might blue eyes feel it in his spirit, one day, when youth and what ifs come cascading in a moment of retrospection. Introspection, I suspect, will drift toward him like an empty raft. Abandoned, no life preserver in sight, because she, ME, took that with her and swam to shallow, safer waters. Feet touching soil have often felt more ideal than trusting the let go, the rising river, the same one that washed away my dreams.

Dreams, the ebb and flow, where the deeper I go, the more I see, he gave me a treasure meant to cherish much later. Perhaps in another lifetime, the river will reconnect us when redirection meets perfection. Until then, soliloquy releases a secret: I loved him. Love reopened, brought up to the surface is like skipping stones again, rippling to another time, another place when lapis lazuli and tiger's eye can remain constant and afloat.