Only of losing you, I wanted to say. Only of a quiet life without your crooked hands in it. Instead I said, "Not while the river remembers us."
Sometimes, on nights when the moon was a pale coin and the river made the same small, endless music, I went back to the bank. I ran my hands through the mud and let the cool seep into my wrists. I would trace the circles she had made and speak the names she used to call the trees, and the leaves would stutter and glow, as if remembering a lullaby.
"Promise me," she said, "when I vanish, remember the river."