Graduating To Wet Stones
First published in Eclectica Vol. 1, No. 2, 1997
I will be twenty-six in July. But you, barely twenty-one, will still be young for another year or two. We sit and watch water stroking sand- a restless petting: Small stones tossed up from their gritty boudoir, ride the foam, nestle in irregular piles, lie still and washed. I recall the last time you were here and I was not. No summer thrills, but plenty of shock; they politely call it therapy. I could almost smell the brine on the cardboard scenery you'd sent me. And when they said I might never share the Pacific with you again I, being a shade more stubborn than weak, pushed back the death dreams. I can tell you what they will never know: The cures, the drugs, every book-smart psychiatrist's plan to evaporate a deluged psyche, none make a moment so clear, as these wet, simple stones freeing themselves.