Amanda Roth

A Ballad for Thirteen Years

This is the one thing that stays the same:
rivers empty into the sea. 

We used to say that we
were the rivers, but that was before 

we kept carving wide
paths away from each other. 

We didn't mean to.
That winter, all ice and frozen 

motion, I didn’t know how
to say I just wanted you 

to come with me. Even in the dark,
arms wide and swinging, we couldn’t find the shore. 

The sky is orange now and we no longer
wish each other into old forms. 

Rivers are dark and I used to be afraid of shadow,
but water is prism is white is every color 

and I wonder how you look in this light
and how we could have 

forgotten that breaking
is not broken, but becoming. 

This is the way of things.
This wholeness will swallow us

on our way into the sea.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Amanda Roth (she/her) is a poet whose work explores motherhood, embodiment and the climate crisis. She is the author of the full-length collection, A Mother’s Hunger (2021), and is featured/forthcoming in Rappahannock Review, Marathon Literary Review, MAYDAY, Moist Journal, Hearth & Coffin, Blood Moon Poetry Press and elsewhere. Online https://msha.ke/amandarothpoetry