Kedar Karkare, PhD

Mud-slick, mission-minded

gathering sticks and deadlines.

My spine a scaffold

for someone else’s dream.

Bridges no one asked for.

A meticulously built life—

washed away

without a second thought.

There was once a need

to stack the world into silence.

Pressed against the current,

teeth gnawing lines into chaos.

Every structure had reason.

Every danger accounted for.

I built with wet hands,

mouth full of bark,

the river swollen with questions

I could not let pass.

A rhythm older than choosing.

I slept like a blueprint,

woke up like a dam—

my body a wall

I didn’t remember choosing.

I watched them slip by—

laughing, twirling in the current,

together.

Belonging to the river

in a way I never did.

And part of me hated them for it.

So I removed

One single log.

And everything collapsed.

I did not break it.

It came undone

in the way a throat loosens

after years of holding a name

it did not choose.

But further downstream

joy flickered.

Whiskers and play—

a slipstream not meant to hold,

but to move.

To glimmer.

I watched

from the brambles of purpose

and began to itch—

not with escape,

but with remembering.

The current took its time

relearning my shape.

It did not rush to receive me.

It carved through the marble of my soul

as if it had been waiting patiently

for my surrender.

And I simply

let the wild come in—

through the pads of my feet,

through the chill in my breath,

and the place just below the ribs.

Now the bark tastes bitter.

And the stones feel like home.

Now I want less:

just hands in cold water,

laughter that forgets itself,

a place to lie naked in the sun

with no explanation.

I’m still learning

how to be touched

without being taken.

How to stay soft

as tears flow from my eyes.

How to let joy have a place

without building it a house.

Now I want to flow,

not rescue.

To be wanted,

not needed.

Now

I don’t want to build or save —

just touch the water

like I belong there.

If you love me,

meet me in the river.

Bring nothing.

Not even a plan.