RJ--we can not--our rivers

Slowly, like someone grappling with newly granted vision, Kit learned to pick out Anna from the waterfalls' rushing. Squinting her eyes one way, she could make out Anna's thin oval face. Slanting her neck, she could see the carefully outlined, pale pink lips and delicate nose. Bowing her head to the keyboard and looking up as if praying, she could see Anna's eyes.

The eyes looked haunted. Troubled, like the nineteenth century woodcuts of abandoned waifs or the grainy black and white photos of youths in the backgrounds of the 1-800-HOTLINE youth crisis cards they stuffed in each missing person flier for Anna.

But when she reached to grasp her daughter's hand, nothing was there. The water that flowed out of the computer drenched nothing at all--the monitor was a cool, glossy hardness, the sides slightly rough plastic, dry and sandy to the touch. She could not pass through the unyielding hardness of the computer, could not reach the water to search for and grasp her daughter's hand.

And the more she watched Anna, the less sure she was that Anna was trying to reach out for her from beyond the glass,

the illusion / of the depths / our rivers / carry / prevents us / from seeing / the truth

if there are / other waters / we can not / know them / all we see / in rivers / is their presence