Between the River and the Rock

By Liz Kellebrew

We were born to this place, to the broad bowl of the sky and the rolling fields of the plains, to the buffalo and wild horses, to the clouds and tall grass. We tore strips of lightning from our sides, and our ribs spread out like the wings of eagles. This is how we fly, from one end of the plain to the other, out where only birds can see.

The buffalo are gone but we are still here, guarding the future with hearts drawn. Arrows will not win this war, nor will guns or dogs or rubber bullets. But when the war comes to you, what can you do?

The soldiers came dressed in black, which doesn’t show the blood. They brought guns and dogs and mace. They told us we had to get off our land, that it wasn’t our land anymore. Some bigwig billionaire had a lot of money invested in this pipeline, they said, and we were standing in the way of progress. Illegal, they said.

The days are long gone when battles are won with arrows or guns, when our men women children lie dead on the cold earth with their still hearts bleeding. These are the days when we have nothing left to lose.

So we are here, with our horses and our songs, with our roots deep as the cottonwood in the river soil, with our memories of rain. It is bitter cold here today, like it was at the day of our birth, and the soldiers will rain freezing water upon us, a prayer for our death.

And we? We pray for the water that brings life, whether that life is ours or another’s, a white man’s or a red man’s or a buffalo’s or a raven’s, and we pray that that life will be long on this good earth, long after our bodies are grass.

Liz Kellebrew’s prose has appeared previously in Writers Resist, as well as The Coachella Review, Elohi Gadugi, The Conium Review, and other publications. Her grandfather’s grandmother walked the Trail of Tears. Visit Liz’s website at lizkellebrew.com.

Photo credit: Cat Calhoun via a Creative Commons license.