Two waters met in the vision—one carrying truth, one carrying a borrowed name. I stood in the seam where they argued without sound.

There was a ceremony once that taught me to forget where I’m from. It did not look violent. It was tender, almost holy—clean robes, careful hands, a smile that promised belonging. And then a new name, smooth and easy to pronounce, slipped into my mouth like a seed that would never bloom. I wore it for years, learning to answer to something that did not know my blood.

The river brought me back to the hour before that renaming and gave me a choice. The water shimmered like glass cut into two veins of light. To my left, the true name—heavy, ancient, breathing with the pulse of those who came before. To my right, the substitute—bright, polite, obedient, quick to vanish the moment it was called.

I watched the currents circle my legs, tugging with opposite intentions. The false one asked for performance; the true one asked for presence. I wept for the years I tried to be the quick thing, the surface shine that earned approval. And I wept again, differently, when the slower current touched my ribs and I felt my body exhale—remembering its first sound.

The river did not shame me. It only asked that I stop pretending to be clean. “Your name,” it said without words, “was never something you earned. It is a drumbeat that began before you arrived. To forget it was to stop dancing; to remember is to move again.”

I understood then why water heals—it teaches return.

When I woke, I answered to myself more easily. Even the small gestures—pouring water into the kettle, rinsing the bowl, watching the steam rise—felt different. Each act carried rhythm again. My hands, like tributaries, had remembered their river. And in that remembering, I became my own ceremony.

This painting is not about defiance—it is about return. The river teaches that what was taken can still remember its source. Every name whispered wrongly sits like a shadow on top of the true one beneath it. And every time we speak with our full breath, we bring that buried song back to light.