River Keeps by Cathy Ulrich

What is lost in the river is all the things thrown or dropped or tossed: keys and beer bottles and a silver-plated bracelet with a clasp that came undone and someone’s bag they didn’t want, a plastic bag filled with mewling things, and here is a bone from Tommy Jessup’s hand, the little pinky bone, after he came to the river and never left, and here is your mother’s wedding ring from that night she called your father a bastard, go on and do it again, you bastard, the red splotch on her face already deepening into a bruise, the way the ring came so easy off her finger into the air and splashed into the water, and here is your parents’ marriage, which stumbled on a while after that night, and here are your father’s apologies, the way he said don’t you know how much it hurts me when you’re scared like this, and here is a bullet and here is a gun and here you are standing at the edge of the water and here is the moon above you and here is the sound of flow and tumble and here is the feel of rocks under your feet and here is the memory of Tommy Jessup’s smile and here is the last breath you take, and here is all the things lost in the river, here are all the things the river keeps.

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CATHY ULRICH — Cathy hasn’t been to the river yet this year. She should go soon. Her work has been published in various journals, including Bulb Region, Wigleaf and Centaur Lit.

Art by BECKS SIMPSON — By day, Becks is just some tech chick, doin’ nerdy software stuff, but by night, she does all the creative things as the Antipode Artist (painter, emerging writer, illustrator, occasional tattooer, musician, singer songwriter, doer of all the arty things).