The Salt of the Current
The smell of river water is never just water. It is the scent of wet silt, of rusted iron, and the heavy, metallic tang of a thousand lives pressing against one another in the dark. I remember the feeling of a wooden railing beneath my palms—damp, splintered, and vibrating with the low, rhythmic thrum of an engine deep in the belly of a boat. It is a vibration that travels up through the soles of your feet, settling into the marrow of your bones until you are no longer standing on a deck, but moving with the current itself. There is a specific ache in the shoulders when you have been traveling for a long time, a longing to shed the skin of the journey and return to the quiet, predictable warmth of a threshold you recognize. We are always drifting, tethered to the shore by nothing more than the memory of a door closing behind us. Does the river ever tire of carrying us toward the places we already know?
Shahnaz Parvin has captured this restless transition in her beautiful image titled Lets Go Back Home. The weight of the evening air seems to press against the river, pulling everyone toward the safety of the land. Can you feel the pull of the shore in this moment?
