once

i found a piece of pumice yesterday on the beach.

once it knew the searing heart of the earth, 

yielded willingly to its inexorable flow. 

one day it met the sea,

fizzled into a hard, empty form, 

was washed beneath the waves and lost. 

how far has it traveled since i found it?

what have we seen?

i have been filling the holes with sunlight, 

the way it paints darkness across my skin

and torments the back of my neck where i cannot see.

the way it filters through muddy water,

such that the mud becomes a mirror for brilliance,

a translator for the invisible shape of waves.

the way it coaxes my plants into forms, 

leaves reaching forth, stems curling in desire, 

warping them into asymmetry.

i whisper these truths of the light into every nook and cranny, every shadow.

remember that, i tell the rock.

for i see the sea on my horizon, too.

there is a part of me that will bid farewell to youth, 

and optimism, and naïveté, 

soon.

i feel myself hardening every time my eyes chance across something that is/was new, 

if i give myself enough time to think about what i’ve seen.

there is an inescapable sense that something impossibly valuable has been lost.

but its name and its prior existence elude me.

maybe i want to lose it, though.

i whisper again into the hollows 

things that are so insignificant they become secret,

release me.