Russian River
Lillian Aff

I lay in the daytime lantern
rocks and branches and bugs
poke into my back
the book is the lampshade
I look for someone to return to
in those pages of her
I look up: no one is around
I swim to the rope swing
I stain my notebook with silt
I get up; the pebbles plop
I see the river
I see the redwood horizon
I try to get back

I saw Mary Oliver walking down the dusty path
I asked her, where do we overlap?
we ate blackberries, juices leaking on our faces
until no one recognized us
the underbrush pricked our fingers
we were dappled in the shade
we looked bruised: we blackberried
she saw me before I knew her name
she saw me in a hospital bed in San Francisco
she saw me learn how to be straight

and Ada Limón, with a transistor radio, 
came up from behind,
started playing “Respect” by Aretha Franklin,
maybe the memory was meant to be imagined,
maybe we’ll both keep pretending,
she seemed to say,
she said nothing,
she was an observer of neighbors, and friends
and many close deaths
of the winding roads and of my home
she went to the river where I swam every day
for seventeen summers,
sometimes wading, sometimes gliding
like a water strider, sometimes sinking
under the weight of unnatural men 
pummeling us against the car seat
sometimes screwing through the pain
sometimes sitting in the memory and skipping rocks slowly,
surely

my mother sometimes calls me to sit in
silence for two minutes and thirty-eight seconds,
or until I hang up the phone
I never know what to say
to a swelling expectation, the weight
too much to hold in my heart
when I’m far away I imagine
I’m fixing her a plate of potatoes and steak
despite a meal’s momentary essence 

so, let’s talk about presence:
presence is rolling the minimal into a ball
so that now we’re in fetal position,
seeing the liminal as the middle of the ritual
even when we know it’s almost over

I still want to be at the before of everything
I still see my mom sitting on that same beach
with her book a fold-out chair,
handing me a scallop-shaped cracker 
with a wiggle of easy cheese,
warning me not to go too far in:
the river has its undercurrents

I imagine what she would say, now, if she could
say it and if I’ll ever know what it’s like to be
aphasic:
when a stroke of bad luck causes your words
to hover

I wonder when Mary and Ada’s voices
became the voice of my mother
​

Lillian Aff is a poet at Scripps College from Monte Rio, California. They are studying English and Creative writing.