Floodplains / aisling henihan

Floodplain

River’s many tongues taste each door she tumbles past on the way to low ground, gathering from headwater to slough, streaming perennial. Twisting as she piles against herself, millions of gallons, and hungrier by the hour, she licks windows, eaves, recalling flavor nearly forgotten, salt of earth, old lover’s kiss, more sour with time. She gulps streets to satisfy a thirst for soil, reclaiming land which has always belonged to her—she who gives and takes, sweeping in her retreat, the hubris of our hand pulled out to sea on her falling tides, leaving only residue: water line on the wall, scrap of paper in the tree, alluvial muck.