Drifting Downstream

The water glinted like polished glass, the lazy river meandering between tall willows and leaning cottonwoods. Their shadows pooled along the bank, patching the slow current with cool darkness. Insects clicked and buzzed invisibly through the reeds, and somewhere distant, a fish leapt with a hollow plop, then vanished. Above it all, sun and sky, sharp and open.

Diane dipped her paddle into the water on the left, then the right, each stroke practiced and unhurried, sending soft ripples widening behind her kayak. Her posture was upright, steady without stiffness. She moved with quiet purpose, her shoulders working in a smooth rhythm, upper body strong, sun-soaked. Her long black hair hung loose, framing her face. Her skin had caught the sun in the way summer skin does, gently burnished, alive. But it was her eyes that stood out, pale blue, like cold sky seen through thin ice. They weren’t piercing so much as watchful, reflective.

The teal of her one piece bathing suit hugged her torso, the high cut curving neatly above her right thigh. Her life vest, bright burnt orange and zipped snug across her chest, pressed flat against her body, marked here and there with tiny scuffs from long use. Where the left side of her body met the seat, it did so cleanly, without a leg, just the smooth plane of her hip curving downward into the cockpit of the kayak. No awkward angles, no compensating shift. It was a body made whole by motion, and Diane carried herself like nothing was missing.

She wasn’t paddling hard, she didn’t need to. The river did most of the work. Sometimes she just floated, paddle across her lap, fingers trailing in the water. She liked the way it felt: the gentle tug, the drag of current against skin. Sometimes she’d close her eyes and imagine it wasn’t water but time passing, washing over her, always forward. Never backward.

She passed beneath a low-hanging branch and ducked instinctively, her long hair brushing the inside of her vest. A leaf clung there for a moment, then drifted down into the hull. She didn’t brush it away. She liked those tiny things, the clutter of leaves, the river’s mutterings, the way her boat rocked when a gust caught it sideways.

Up ahead, the river widened into a long, shallow bend. A blue heron stood still among the reeds, neck drawn in, patient as stone. Diane dipped her paddle again, keeping to the center of the current. Her movements were fluid, confident. At the bend, the kayak drifted to one side, nudged gently by a crosswind. She corrected without thought, dipping her paddle in short, silent strokes.

Once around the curve, she let the current carry her again. Her left arm stretched out across the lip of the kayak, hand hanging just over the water. Her right foot, bare and sun warmed, shifted slightly where it was braced against the footrest. The spot where her other foot would’ve been was just open space and quiet.

A dragonfly zipped past, landing on the tip of her bow.

She smiled, lips closed, breath soft through her nose.

There was nothing dramatic about it, nothing grand. Just a woman in her kayak, letting the day carry her downstream like she belonged to the river. And maybe, in her stillness, she did.