PROSE POETRY
ISSUE 12 EDITOR'S CHOICE AWARD
NINA PICK
TWO RIVERS
When you return, you will return by a different route. You will cross where the water is deep. You will ride the ferry across the wide mouth of the river. Your tattered sandals will have fallen from your feet. You will be barefoot, or wearing new shoes. Your hair will be longer or shorter. You will have removed the last slivers of your anger and become free of them. You will cross the river to the same shore you left many years ago, but the shore will be different. You will not be sure if the river has changed or the eyes that see it. Enough time has elapsed that even the unforgivable has been forgiven.
Nina Pick is the editor of The Gardener Says and the author of two chapbooks, Leaving the Lecture on Dance and À Luz. The recipient of a 2016 Mesa Refuge Poetry Fellowship, her writing has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Arion, Bombay Gin, Lilith.org, the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project, the Dark Mountain Project, and most recently The Dreamers Anthology: Writing Inspired by the lives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Anne Frank. Her book At the Edge of the Dirac Sea is forthcoming from Shanti Arts.