You’re standing on the shallow side of a river, with the rushing water lapping at your ankles. Occasionally slapping at your calves with its chilled tongue, but you don’t feel it because you are so consumed by staring at the river’s current.

It keeps pushing forward. Maybe travelling at thirty miles an hour. You can’t see past the river’s bend and all you can think about is what if there are rapids ahead? And what if they drag you down and drown you. What if the surface tension never breaks and you are sucked at the bottom of that river. So you don’t want to join in. You don’t want to move forward from where you are.

There’s always the dry river bank. That’s where you once were. On the safe, safe river bank. But you can’t bring yourself to stumbled back there because there’s nowhere left for you to stand. Bushes have overgrown it, forcing you into the shallow end of the river bank, but not the dangerous and unpredictable current in the middle.

Some kids are just zipping on by. Floating casually in inner tubes that their parents bought them. You’re supposed to be a swimmer. But who taught you how to swim?

You’re still standing there. As your ankles plunge deeper into the soft, sticky mud that pulls you down and never lets you go. As your indecision places pressure on your mind and the river bank places pressure on your feet, but your toes shouldn’t turn into fossils as a price to pay because of your inability to move forward.

With each passing second it gets harder and harder to break free because the mud’s at your calves now. The water is at your knees and it mixes with your nervous sweat.

And the only soft comfort you can whisper to yourself is

“At least I’m not drowning.”

But you aren’t quite living, are you?

No, you’re just wading in the river of life.

Always wading. Always waiting.

My Valentines Day contest has ended! It was a pretty tough decision, but then I asked myself what I really wanted this challenge to be about...

@probablegoblin you stunned me with not only your message (which captured exactly how I think of Valentines Day) and you did it in such a BEAUTIFUL way.

Thank you for all the amazing entries!

check out their work below!

https://theprose.com/post/333506/for-those-who-are-forgotten