Water Does Not Remember

They say “You cannot step into the same river twice, 
for it's not the same river and you're not the same man”
How comforting,
how hygienic.
As if water cared about philosophy
and men obeyed footnotes.

Still, there we were,
If I can say we, 
Because really, it was only me.
Shoes off, dignity folded somewhere dry,
Trying again and again.
Same bend. Same Hunger.
Pretending repetition was not a belief system.

I kept asking the wrong questions.
Not only "is this the same river?",
but
how much of me is still thirsty enough to lie?
To myself?

Because I swear I think I tasted it.
That sweetness.
The old clarity you emanated, that made promises feel unnecessary.
I drank, fast, afraid the river, the water might notice.

Meanwhile, you were already gallivanting.
Not away, in the exact sense.
Just downstream.
Erosion with a pretty smile.

You gnaw at the banks 
Of other people’s affection
Like its not hunger,
Just as if it were curiosity,
Like damage is a misunderstanding, an accident,
It always was for you…

And I, ever the moral optimist,
Kept insisting that water remembers.
That if I buried my face enough in the stream that passed,
I could sip what we once shared.

But rivers aren’t nostalgic.
They aren’t archives of love or devotion.
They carry refusal, renewal,
A constant repetition of “not the same”, “not the past”.

Somewhere up the stream
emptying itself onto us, an industrial womb.
Desire mass-produced.
Intimacy diluted.
The kind of pollution that may look blue
only if the light is kind.

I searched.
I tried.
I failed with commitment
and failed again with style.
At least that I can do.

Then something vulgar happened.
Understandment.

Not dramatic.
No revelation, no applause from an audience.
Just the quiet insult of clarity.

We are not who we were.
The river is not what I keep naming it.
And forcing my mouth to remember sweetness
was only teaching me thirst.

Strangely, this does not wound me.
Acceptance is not pompous.
It doesn't seduce.
Simply, it sits down and refuses to leave.

I have grown.
You have changed.
Which sounds generous
until you hear what it means.

We no longer belong to each other.
And for the first time,
the water does not argue, and I do not try.