Nonfiction by Julia Ziegler
Julia Ziegler
Confessions of a River
“Right foot forward, yep, just like that, and then back, mhm, exactly,” I laughed as he stumbled. “You’re doing great,” I assured him.
“How do you know how to do this?” he asked, looking down at our feet with wonder.
“I took ballroom dancing in middle school,” I said. “It was just something we all did.”
Isaac’s hands slid from mine and found their way to my lower back. Though I was used to his touch, it still sent shivers through my skin every time. The first time he kissed me, on my kitchen counter, I was shocked by the sensation. It traveled from my lips to my chest to my core and shot out in waves through my limbs. The kiss itself almost convinced me I had never really been kissed before.
“Well it’s really hot,” he said through a tipsy smile. I laughed again and threw my head back. He held me up by the base of my spine.
“I’m glad you think so,” I said, and I was. I had desired attention before, but never like this. I was so aware of everything I did under his gaze. Every movement. In reality, I didn’t have to be. I think he saw right through every calculated step.
“We should go for a swim,” he suggested. “Once the sun sets.”
It was the last night of our little summer vacation in Sunriver. His family’s vacation home was a five-minute walk from the edge of the Deschutes River. We’d spent the previous few days kayaking down its waves.
“I think you’re right,” I said, knowing it would probably be the last swim. As much as I didn’t want our escape from reality to end, there were things I needed to confront at home. There was a life he had to return to. We’d been prolonging the inevitable for a month already.
Getting out of town that weekend was a decision I didn’t take lightly. Earlier in the summer, my mother’s boyfriend had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. In the following months, our lives revolved around his treatment, or the lack thereof. Truthfully, we all knew come August there’d be nothing left to do. Anything offered would only prolong his passing by weeks at best. I didn’t realize it at the time, but avoidance threaded through all my decisions that summer.
But Sunriver gave me moments to think about something other than my impending grief. Though I couldn’t go more than an hour without my thoughts wandering to my mother’s boyfriend, the breaks between worries were necessary. I think Isaac knew this. He didn’t shy away from talking about reality, but he didn’t push it either. If he could provide moments of pleasure or rest, he would, and he did.
We ate dinner that evening with Isaac’s brother, Toby, and Toby’s girlfriend, Sarah. Isaac’s parents had spent three days in Sunriver with us but had to return to work a day earlier, leaving us to enjoy the house by ourselves. After cleaning up the kitchen, Isaac and I invited Toby and Sarah to the river with us, secretly hoping they would decline. They opted to stay at the house. Isaac grabbed two towels and my hand and pulled me out the front door.
“Are you cold?” he asked, wrapping his arm around my shoulders.
“A bit,” I replied, looking up at his face in the moonlight.
“It’s going to be even colder in the water,” he cautioned. I knew this, but I wanted to dive in anyway. Like most thrilling things, I would regret not getting in the water.
“Worth it.”
By the time we arrived at the shore’s edge, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The stars shone above us. More stars than I had seen in a long time. We weren’t talking, and in the absence of words I heard everything else. The stars sang against the surface of the water. The clicking of insects, which I assumed to be crickets, buzzed through the air—background noise. It was as if the world around us was quietly screaming, you can’t avoid talking about what’s to come.
I let go of Isaac’s hand and unbuttoned my flannel. We’d forgone the swimsuits that night since it was only the two of us. My skin rose in bumps against the cool night air. My flannel fell into the grass and I fumbled with the button on my shorts. Pulling them down to my ankles, I wondered if he was looking, if he could even see me. Despite the fact he’d seen me naked countless times by then, it still made me nervous. He was so observant. He assured me he liked what he saw, but I was always waiting for him to notice some flaw.
“Come on,” I whispered, not daring to look back at him.
I considered diving in headfirst. This would be the quickest way to brace myself for the cold. It’s what I’d done with Isaac only a month earlier: dove in despite knowing there was an imminent end. Instead, I chose to walk in slowly, letting the water rise up my legs and then my stomach.
I stared at the trees lining the river in front of me. They wrapped around us in every direction, creating a tunnel up to the sky with the stars at the end. The glassy water brought chills every time it lapped against my bare skin. I shivered.
Seconds passed, and Isaac wrapped himself around me. I felt his chest rise and fall in breaths against my back. He rested his chin on top of my head while his hands found the sides of my waist. I no longer shivered from the cold, only from his touch.
We stood like that for a while, still not saying anything, let alone starting the conversation neither one of us wanted to have. Isaac was leaving. In two weeks, he would go back to school to finish his last year of college. I’d graduated in May earlier that year, so I was home indefinitely. I was not leaving.
There were many things I wanted to tell him. Like how much I was going to miss him. How falling asleep next to someone else had never been easy for me, but it was easy with him. How I was scared that my mom’s boyfriend was dying, and everyone was leaving, and despite my affinity for change, I wanted to run in the opposite direction. How I thought that in time, Isaac could become my favorite person.
Instead, I let tears fall down my cheeks. They were quiet, and if Isaac noticed them, he didn’t say anything to let on. They were thank you tears, goodbye tears, until next time tears. They were we are right here tears. We matter tears. All this time, you were right here.
When he let go of me to plunge into the water, I wiped the salt off my cheek with the back of my hand. I thought about how tomorrow I would go home to my mother, and her boyfriend, and all the things I was running away from. The countdown would begin. I didn’t know who would leave first, or what change would trigger the cascade of changes, but it was coming. I would walk forward.
With Isaac underneath the surface of the water, out of sight, I thought about the prospect of no longer seeing him every day. The change would come, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. Talking about it seemed futile. When he emerged from the water, I let my excuse for silence win.
“Let’s go back now?” I whispered between the shivers returning to my skin with the absence of his heat.
In my head, I said goodbye to Isaac. I said goodbye to the river that saw me vulnerable, and the stars that sang, and the breeze that tickled. We walked to shore and huddled together between the towels we brought. We silently put our clothes back on, and he grabbed my hand and guided us home. I decided to leave what was left unsaid with the waves of the river, and he let me.
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Julia Ziegler is an emerging queer Filipina-American writer based out of Nashville, Tennessee. She writes poetry, short stories, and personal essays on love and relationships, mental health, and identity. You can read some of her work at her personal blog, www.juliaziegler0307.
