"When you speak your sorrow to the water, sometimes it carries your voice to the ones you miss."
The river had always been there. Flowing softly beyond the sugarcane fields, winding like a ribbon of silver memory.
Krish had walked past it many times. But he had not sat by its edge since the funeral. He wasn't ready. The sound of water used to calm him. Now, it made him feel like something inside him was always moving, but never arriving.
Until today.
It had rained in the morning. The sky was now clearing, and the trees dripped slowly, as if releasing grief one leaf at a time.
He didn't tell Ma he was going. He needed to do this alone. He slipped out with his notebook, his old satchel, and a folded letter he had written weeks ago but never dared read.
The river was quieter than he remembered. No birds. No breeze. Just the soft murmur of water licking the stones, like a secret spoken slowly.
Krish sat on a flat rock near the bank. The spot where his father had once skipped stones, where they had once shared roasted peanuts and laughter that bounced higher than the sun.
He pulled the letter from his pocket. His hands trembled. It wasn't a goodbye. It was a confession.
He read it aloud, voice low and cracked:
"Dear Papa, Sometimes I don't know if I'm healing or just hiding. Sometimes I pretend I'm okay so others won't worry. But at night, I hear your voice in the wind. It tells me it's okay to feel too much. It tells me I don't have to grow up too fast.
I miss you in small things—in burnt toast, in broken shoelaces, in songs I can't sing out loud. I wish you'd come back, not forever, just for one more tea. One more word. One more silence.
Love, Krish."
He folded it slowly, and placed it in the water.
The paper floated for a moment, then began to drift. Not fast. Just enough.
He watched it until it vanished around the bend. And with it, something loosened inside him.
The tears came again. Not violently. Just real.
He stayed there for hours. Listening. Remembering.
The river didn't talk. But it didn't ignore him either. It stayed. And sometimes, staying is the answer.
A gentle wind picked up. The kind his father used to say was "the river's breath." Krish closed his eyes. Let it touch his face. And imagined his father sitting beside him, knees pulled close, saying nothing, just being there.
He whispered, "Thank you for showing up in the places I didn't expect."
By the time the sun began to fall behind the trees, Krish stood. He didn't feel finished. But he felt full.
As he turned to go, he saw something caught in a branch by the shore. A paper scrap. Not his. Older. Faded.
He pulled it free. It was damp, nearly unreadable, but one line was still clear:
"Time carries love further than memory ever can."
No name. No sender. Just a sentence that felt like it had waited just for him.
He tucked it into his notebook, held it close.
When he returned home, Ma was waiting at the doorstep. She looked at his eyes, said nothing. Just reached out, and held his hand.
"I went to the river," he said.
"I know," she replied. "Your shoes always carry mud from only one place."
That night, he didn't write a new letter. Instead, he opened the notebook, and copied the found line at the top of a fresh page. Beneath it, he wrote:
"I believe you're still walking with me. Not beside me, but through everything I notice, everything I hold, everything I let go."
He lit a candle. Left the window open. Let the wind move through the room.
The river wasn't far. And he knew, somewhere in that water, some part of his voice would always be flowing.