The Weight of the Current

There is a silence that belongs only to water. It is not the absence of sound, but a heavy, liquid patience that swallows the noise of the shore. We spend our lives learning to hold things—tools, burdens, the expectations of those who came before us. We carry them until the weight becomes a part of our own shape, until we no longer know where the hand ends and the object begins. To be young is to be unburdened by the history of the load. It is to move through the cold, indifferent flow with a gaze that has not yet learned to look away. We watch the surface, waiting for a ripple, forgetting that the depth is where the truth settles. What remains when the bucket is emptied and the water closes over the path we have just traveled?

Kazi Fazly Rabby has captured this quiet persistence in the image titled Fishermans Son. It reminds us that some burdens are carried with a grace we have long since forgotten. Does the water feel the weight of the boy, or does it simply hold him?