Leila Cankaya's poem asks one question over and over: did we really live? The speaker doesn't answer it. Instead she sets up an image of a river and lets it stand for time passing. People live "near the river," moving along like the water, without much hope. The line "we..." breaks off, as if the speaker can't finish the thought, or doesn't want to.
In the second half, the river returns, but now it describes a life lived "in the border of the society," calm and routine. That calm doesn't sound peaceful so much as empty. The speaker seems to feel that people have drifted along on the edges, doing what's expected, without ever fully taking part in their own lives.
The ending turns more urgent. "Somebody should say the reality," she insists, then says it again, more firmly. The mood is quiet, weary and unsettled, a gentle surface with a sharp question underneath. The poem leaves us with that question hanging, and doesn't make it easy to look away.