Veronica Tucker

What the River Forgot to Tell Itself

The river does not remember
the shape of the boat,
only the wake.

It speaks in broken reflections,
a syntax of shimmer and rupture,
not quite language,
not quite lie.

Last spring, it held
an entire conversation
with the wind
but forgot the words
by dusk.

A stone, once mistaken
for a child's skull,
rests at the bend
where silence sharpens.

Even the current dreams
in spirals,
unbraiding time
like hair.

Nothing here
moves forward.

Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician based in New Hampshire. Her writing draws from her experiences in medicine and everyday life, often exploring themes of uncertainty, memory, and meaning. Her poems appear in redrosethorns, Eunoia Review, Stone Poetry Quarterly, and others. She is especially interested in poetry that leans into ambiguity and resists easy resolution.