Silver Falls
by Melody Wilson
published in Cleaver Magazine, 2021
We have driven east this bright afternoon, the two of us, young parents on a break from
entropy. I am drowning in something I can’t define and the day reels out like un-spliced frames
of someone else’s life. We park the car and skirt past other people’s happiness, past picnic tables and barbecues.
You take my hand and we climb to the falls. The noise of life filters up: laughter, singing. I am relieved
when the roar of water engulfs the din. I taste the mist on my anesthetized skin, inhale the green power
of the fall, but do not jump. Something slippery creeps up by spine, maybe vertigo, maybe hope.
