First Love

She Is the River

This poem is inspired by “River Flows in You” by Yiruma on his album First Love.

Love didn’t knock. It tiptoed in with the morning light and danced quietly through the kitchen while the rest of the world slept.

She danced to it once,

barefoot on the kitchen floor,

spinning slow in morning light

while the kettle sighed.

The song drifted in like sunlight

through the half-cracked window,

and her hair caught fire

in the golden hush of it all.

She didn’t know I was watching.

Or maybe she did.

But she danced anyway—

like nothing had ever hurt her,

like everything was beginning again.

Even now,

when silence falls just right,

I hear her footsteps

in every measure.

She is music.

She is memory.

She is the river

that still flows in me.