The rain had stopped hours ago, but the air still clung to everything—clothes, hair, the insides of my lungs. I stood on the edge of the overpass, watching the river below churn brown and fast. Not watching, really. Feeling. Because somewhere beneath my ribs, something had begun to move. Not a flutter. A current.
"I feel myself torrent," I said again. This time, I didn't whisper. And this time, it wasn't a confession. i feel myself torrent
It started small: a forgotten grocery list that surfaced in my mind with the clarity of a scream. Then a laugh I’d buried six years ago, rising like a bubble from deep water—my mother’s laugh, the one she used before the treatments, before the slow quiet. I didn’t summon it. It just came. And then another. And another. Memories I’d locked in chests, weighted with stones, were now drifting up unannounced. The rain had stopped hours ago, but the
Not all at once. Not the merciful flood that sweeps you away clean. No, this was worse and better: a steady, stubborn torrent. Every suppressed shout, every bite of swallowed anger, every night I’d pressed my fists into my thighs to keep from screaming—they were all waking up. They wanted out. They wanted air. Feeling
I screamed into a pillow until my throat bled. I wrote letters I’d never send, filled with words I’d never speak. I tore a photograph in half—not out of spite, but out of honesty. That person wasn't me anymore. That person had been standing still while the river rose around her knees, pretending she wasn't getting wet.