Everything the River Gives
I wish I could remember more moments of joy and celebration in my life. I wish I could document them with the precision and clarity of a barn owl listening for a particular rustle of grass as it waits for a meal. Instead, I have a savant-like ability, perhaps a sick proclivity, for cataloging all the pain, the sorrow, and sadness. What seems at odds with this inclination is that I don't often feel like an overly sad or morose person (most of the time).
What is it about the human psyche and our uncanny ability to string a garland of suffering more easily than glittering pearls of joy?
A poem I once read, then twice and then again and again until warm tears glistened against my cheeks, back when I was in college, young and confused and yearning to change my major because all of the unanswered questions inside of me could not be meted out in a chemistry lab. (My confusion was laying the groundwork for the bravery I would need to cultivate for my own survival as a queer artist and eldest daughter from a Nigerian family).
Anyways, I found myself in a poetry workshop facing a poem whose title is now lost to me. I think it was something like, “Everything the river gives.” It was the first time that words on a page expressed a feeling of love so yearning that I could not ignore the parts of me that understood that longing, even though I could not yet name it.
The writer visits a river every day, and every day they gaze into its eddies and whorls, along the shoreline for something to take home to their lover. Each of these ordinary objects, sometimes a rock, or piece of glass, or shell, becomes a symbol for their unending love for their partner and the river itself.
And perhaps, this poem reached me with its simplicity and naked truth, and the lists (oh how I love lists!). Someday, I hope to be reunited with this poem, although I fear the memory and the overwhelming feeling of love, even in my paltry reconstruction, will leave me more disappointed if ever it were found.
Joy, too, is like a river. It is the surrendering to a body moving between the shoreline of tremendous grief and rage.
It is a sudden jolt of aliveness, when each of your cells is magnified by a melody so sweet you buzz. It burps and gurgles as it rushes over smooth rocks and gathering moss, pooling in unexpected divots in the edifice.
Joy is that precious moment when someone recognizes something in you that was once unreachable or even unfathomable, that this part of yourself could ever be befriended.
The feeling of those blissful few seconds, or sometimes, if you are lucky, the quaking rumble of a deep belly laugh—water rushing over the edge of the falls to be reunited with itself.
Joy is when you have spent a season welcoming darkness, and the light finally breaches the deepest hollow. Your eyelids close to catch the red-orange-yellow wash of late-winter sun as the earth turns eastward, carrying her towards the horizon.
Joy is the news when your partner receives the clearance that the cancer is gone, and you both laugh because now you are both officially “cancer survivors™.” You say it with tears in your eyes, even as you emphasize the little “c” because you do not feel worthy of the big “C.” Even as you say it now, you feel the water eroding the shoreline. The danger of the river entwined with its beauty is also heartbreak. Because the reality of death is always looming. But for one brief moment, you are both suspended in a wave of luminescent happiness.
A pearl is formed when an irritant enters a mollusk; sometimes it can be a piece of sand, or a parasite, or even a part of its shell. Its defense mechanism initiates in an effort to rid itself of the debris, and the oyster, or clam, secretes a compound around the invader called nacre, or mother-of-pearl. Over years, the pearl grows larger and more iridescent (1). The scar is its beauty mark.
Maybe our bodies, too, are like the oysters? Agitating and pulling and roiling to upend all of this immense violence into something ineffable. May we return to our waters over and over again in hopes that everything the river gives reminds us that we are sacred, and our lives are sacred, and so too is our joy.
Mutual Aid Donations: Last quarter (April-June 2026), your support generated $1,120.95 in mutual aid merch profits from Little Gaze and my Etsy shop. I donated $1089.56 (minus platform fees & tips) to various mutual aid organizations. You can view the donation receipts here.
I didn't share a newsletter in April, but I completed my quarterly donations for January-March 2026. Your support generated $861.32 in mutual aid merch profits. I donated $926 (minus platform fees & tips) to various mutual aid organizations. The donated amount is higher than the overall profit because I mistakenly donated the amount for Chicago Mutual Aid to Abortion Access. I hate spreadsheets, but it was a nice mistake. You can view the donation receipts here.