Associations of stone

Penguins offer stones to one another as a sign of love, for those stones are essential to building their nests. And in Antarctica, stones are rare.

I too would like to give you a stone.

It isn’t to say that a stone is essential to building a life; it’s because you’re willing to take it from me that I can tell you this, the one thing my life can’t do without, now, is you.

I do not know if, in the future, we will still be able to shape life together in all its forms.

But I hope that each stone, like the tiny decisions we make every day, will come to form our shared imprint; we may not remember each one, but we will know that they are us.

If we were to dissect life, it would be the vessel that holds and carries us, a ship that bears us through time.

Stones live longer than we do, travel farther than we ever could. They come from so far away, from an age so ancient that once, neither of us had yet taken form. Can we truly hold something that will outlive us? At this very moment, somewhere in the world, two hands—yours and mine—close together around a stone.

The stones visible on the surface are easy to find; what is harder is to discover that, sometimes, when one splits a stone open, another heart of stone lies hidden within. Each time I lift it in my hand, I remember: if I was ready to meet you, it was so you could open it, as one opens my heart, to take something from it and to place something of yours inside.

“After all, some coins may exist longer than you,” I tell myself.

One day we will both be gone, but the stone will remain.

If you stay by my side, I may never again feel that first thrill of finding it among so many others, because we will always be able to gather new ones together, and place them within it.

We think we possess it, yet it is it that possesses us.

We cannot share in its past, nor remember it.

And yet, when we have vanished, it will still remember us.