Poetic Rowing

Every start of a race in those silent, drawn-out minutes— holding back the river, blade buried, waiting.

And I think of my mother.

Maybe it’s because she paid for my rowing fees in high school, in quiet sacrifices she never mentioned.

And I stuck with it— still paying, in this shell, like a debt I never learned how to discharge.

A thousand races later, here I am— waiting in the fog.

The call is coming. And when the hull erupts forward, for just a breath, it feels like she’s still pushing me through the mist.

—anonymous rower One of us