I was sitting beside the riverbed when the water began to rise;
when the rocks and pebbles once buried within next moved along the tide.
The world was silent as if it knew how this was going to end.
As if it would apologize, if that could make amends.
I climbed up to the top of the hill when I woke the very next day;
I basked inside the memory of when you said that you would stay.
Gently I knelt, my body now low; lower beside your grave,
trying to conjure your eyes, the way that you smiled-
the love you so selflessly gave.
I felt maybe the world was grieving, that maybe it missed you too,
but if the world had cared for us that much that wouldn’t have happened to you.
The rain picked up when day five came, it continued to pour through eight.
My house flooded on nine and ten and I climbed back to your grave.
The stones were now smooth to the touch, the color of my wings,
reminding me of a time in which I cared for such small things.
By the time I woke on day fourteen, I realized I couldn’t eat.
The rising water took the deer, and the fruit up in the trees.
I hiked and flew as far as I could, the rain then weighing me down. I could no longer see your grave
or feel your body beneath the ground.
Eventually the world was no longer silent.
The wind sang of loss on day twenty.
The birds had stopped their desperate defiance,
and the heavens accepted them gently.
Soon, twenty five days passed.
I cried when it reached twenty six.
It’s true I was always an outcast,
but never as lonely as this.
I think I made it to thirty two before the waters forced me down.
I tried to uphold the promise I made when I buried you in the ground,
but no matter my clawing, my kicking and screaming,
no matter the way that I had been grieving,
the tide knew not of mercy-
knew not of love and fear-
I heard bones crack
and branches snap
like ringing in my ears.
As my fragile shoulder popped out of socket, I gasped and I screamed in pain,
but the waters rushed into my lungs and I could no longer hear the rain.
The surface eventually disappeared, and the world around me was dark.
I could no longer hear the tide but just the beating of my heart.
My last thought was only of you, as delirious as I was-
the pressure reminded me of what it meant to feel another’s love-
and as I heard my heartbeat fade, I felt the irony for what it was-
of the Nephilim of the riverbeds
now drowning in The Flood.
Author’s Note:
I got the idea for this poem from a short story of mine, but it quickly evolved into something more. What was once a look into past lives, divinity, and humanity, turned into a larger expression of grief and the struggle within oneself. The rain in the biblical flood lasted 40 days and 40 nights. In a similar way, nobody’s metaphorical flood ends in just one day, and not everybody lives to see that end.
Benjamin Bollinger | 17 | Missouri, USA | @riverbed_angel on Instagram
