#### The First Water Is the Body - Natalie Diaz (highlights) > [!Book]- Metadata > **The First Water Is the Body** de _Natalie Diaz_ > > Category: #articles > Document tags: #the__river #water > > “We carry the river, its body of water, in our body.” In a bracing prose poem, Mojave / Akimel O’odham poet Natalie Diaz articulates the continuity between her body and the body of the Colorado River. > > → https://emergencemagazine.org/poem/the-first-water-is-the-body/ > >  When a Mojave says, *Inyech ‘Aha Makavch ithuum*, we are saying our name. We are telling a story of our existence. *The river runs through the middle of my body*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he5swm1ap86xayb36360k81r)) --- Translated into English, *‘Aha Makav* means *the river runs through the middle of our body, the same way it runs through the middle of our land.* ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he5sxgnbh4s6yqd9hr2r4k9x)) --- When Mojaves say the word for *tears*, we return to our word for *river*, as if our river were flowing from our eyes. *A great weeping* is how you might translate it. Or *a river of grief*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he5syf0sddwqpaeygpw6sk22)) #favorite --- We carry the river, its body of water, in our body. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he5syv5cn0a397h7g7s59ga3)) --- This is not juxtaposition. Body and water are not *two unlike things*—they are more than *close together* or *side by side*. They are *same*—body, being, energy, prayer, current, motion, medicine. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he5sz8xjwmsgwwrq4re82ptr)) --- In Mojave thinking, body and land are the same. The words are separated only by the letters ‘ii and ‘a: ‘iimat for body, ‘amat for land. In conversation, we often use a shortened form for each: *mat-*. Unless you know the context of a conversation, you might not know if we are speaking about our body or our land. You might not know which has been injured, which is remembering, which is alive, which was dreamed, which needs care. You might not know we mean both. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he5szg9wa7qatsbdsnqn40nw)) #favorite --- If I say, *My river is disappearing*, do I also mean, *My people are disappearing*? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he5szky63nr4aa3rtps485a4)) --- A river is a body of water. It has a foot, an elbow, a mouth. It runs. It lies in a bed. It can make you good. It has a head. It remembers everything. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he5t0qt0y4k583hwe4srzf8b)) --- If I was created to hold the Colorado River, to carry its rushing inside me, if the very shape of my throat, of my thighs is for wetness, how can I say who I am if the river is gone? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he5t12xt5p1snj2qdtx43wkg)) --- If your builder could place a small red bird in your chest to beat as your heart, is it so hard for you to picture the blue river hurtling inside the slow muscled curves of my long body? Is it too difficult to believe it is as sacred as a breath or a star or a sidewinder or your own mother or your beloveds? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he5t24s55wmrnq4e7shqsxf6)) --- The water we drink, like the air we breathe, is not a part of our body but is our body. What we do to one—to the body, to the water—we do to the other. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01he5t36p6hyzzjhqkmw8at71w)) ---