20/03/2026
I walk this riverbed every morning. The stones press into my feet in ways I already know. The air carries the same damp weight. The trees do not move, but they are never still. I can feel them, the way they hold time.
Sometimes, the loud ones come. They arrive in growling shapes, smelling of metal and distance. They stop when they see me. They become very still, but not like the forest is still. Their stillness is sharp. They look.
I do not know what they see when they look at me.
I do not know why they need to remember me in little clicking sounds.
They stay for a while. Then they go. They always go.
The sound fades, and the space they leave behind fills up again, with birds, with wind, with the low hum beneath the ground that I have always followed.
The sun rises the same way.
The birds begin again.
The river does not change its mind.
I keep walking.
