Water carves through stone—
Not lost, not stolen, just moved,
One feeds, one holds still.
It had rained the night before, the kind of rain that does not ask permission, that rushes in heavy and leaves just as quickly. The river that ran through the valley was swollen now, dark and fast, a restless body twisting against the land that held it.
She stood on the bank, her bare feet sinking slightly into the damp earth, watching the current shift and pull. He stood a few steps behind her, hands in his pockets, the silence between them thick as silt.
Neither of them spoke, but they were both thinking the same thing.
Who was the river?
Who was the bed?
Had she been the one to break forward, to move ahead, carrying the moments of them with her?
Had he been the one to stay, to hold the shape of something long after the water had passed?
Or had they always been both—one shaping, one flowing, one containing, one resisting—until neither knew where one ended and the other began?
Most people think of love as a thing to hold, something stable, something that remains unchanged.
But love is movement. Love is erosion, expansion, redirection.
- A river does not ask the land for permission to change.
- A riverbed does not remain unmarked by what has passed through it.
- The deepest connections are not about staying the same—they are about what is created in the process of shaping and being shaped.
You do not love someone by possessing them.
You love them by letting them flow through you—without fear of what they will take, without fear of what they will leave behind.
Nothing is fixed, that beauty is in the impermanence of what we share before it changes form.
A love that never shifts has already stopped living.
A love that refuses to flow will never reach the ocean.
A love that tries to stay the same will become shallow, then dry, then disappear entirely.
We are not meant to hold love.
We are meant to stand in its current, let it shape us, and trust that even when it moves on, it will never truly be lost.
Lessons from the River
- To love is to change and to be changed.
- You cannot stop water from moving—only decide how you meet it.
- Some days, you will be the river. Some days, you will be the bed. Accept both.
- Love does not disappear—it only flows somewhere new.
- What is carried away is never gone. It only exists differently.
The clouds had cleared now, and the water was turning lighter as the morning sun stretched across its surface. She bent down, trailing her fingers through the current. He watched, but did not reach out.
They were both here, but not where they once were.
And maybe that was not something to mourn.
Maybe that was just what love was—not a thing to stay inside, but a thing to move through, to be changed by, to release back into the world.
The river did not hesitate.
And neither did they.
life 
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