WATER
I tell myself: I only change for me. The water changes for nothing.
West is a home. This landscape looks as if there is no change on the surface, but slowly transforms.
I question permanence, in me, in land.
There is this intuition I have of knowing what I need to do for myself. Being near water is an echo, a whisper, a reminder. What I have known I’ve known all along. It moves through me, I move through it.
How can things be dying, leaving and growing all at once? What is left over of land? What is left over of me?
I thought about how land drinks water, soaking it up into the cracks of the cliffs. I saw the burnt trees from the Woolsey fires that are still alive, though their bark is black. Ash wiped off on my jeans as I went down a steep hill and held onto a branch, the water moving underneath me.
images and words by Maiwenn Raoult
©2023