Rivers

On the day of the first woman’s menarche, the first man said “Oh no, you are hurt?”

She replied “Oh no, I am fine.”

“But your blood flows like the rivers.”

“And rivers by God are meant to flow.”

“No, no you do know.”

“I do.”

“You don’t. And I will heal you even in your ignorance and ingratitude.” And he tucked his third thumb so it would staunch the blood, leaking his desire a silent flood.

A few days later the blood had stopped and the woman was pleasured and appalled.

He praised himself “I told you I was right.”

And for three sets of three moons there never was blood again until first life was born to the woman’s joy and man’s loving scorn. She rejoiced “I create life from the flow that you almost killed, from the flow that had almost died. Imagine the fate of the oceans if the rivers were dried.”

“You clearly had not bled but this new life has gone to your head.” And during his words the flow started again.

“Let me heal you before you meet you end.”

This time she refused, and the flow stopped in some days. The man could not believe he was wrong. But her celebrations were short lived when the flow returned in a month as if he and He had willed. And when the third set of three moons had come, no new life was born. The woman was crestfallen. The man grew sympathetic seeing her fallen.

He muttered “You bleed but not through a wound, I admit just as you said, but like rivers who flow as they should.”

She looked up through tears in her eyes “Thank you for understanding my kind.”

“It is only right but what shall we do?” Eying the child, the bastion of possible life.

“Rivers flow and so they must.”

“But if a river has nowhere to go?”

“The river will dwindle, stop, and recycle its flow.”

“What of the water then? Wasted, just like blood?”

“No, it peters into a stream then droplets then rain so that the whole world may gain.”

“And when it finds a home?”

“Vulnerable it will be, nestling as a bird does with its feathers in a nest, with its waters in a basin in rest. The water grows and grows from the river from which it feeds. It will become a pond then a lake then an ocean until it too has too much to keep.”

“Rivers must then not just recycle but make, like you, inflection points of sea. But where does the new water come from? Surely it grows but it cannot arise from none?”

“Perhaps it comes from you.”

The man was humbled, “But how can this be?”

“You tried to staunch my blood with your masculinity. And absent this desire no new life emerged. Alas it must be you whose force you believed creates a dam actually harrows the earth, amplifying my water like sea in eroding sand.”

“What joy to think you are the deluge and I am the land, that in making this child, I had a hand.”

“Yes, my rivers are each a sentence and the life a whole story starting at a new point. Let us then call them periods and together humanity anoint.”

“There is great power in love and in creation. You or nothing else need be victim to my arrogant subjugation.”

“It is clear that not love but the prospect of life tames a man.”

“And that a woman is water, in unity wielding infinite lifespans.”