Of Forests & Clocks & Dreams (A Literary & Art Collection)

By The River

Based off of the characters and a setting in Espresso Love, dedicated in the memory of several people and to those with stories to tell.

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She was sweeping her fingers along the surface. It was a little strange to see—almost as if she couldn't actually wet them, because the water was some sort of elastic membrane. If she had pressed down, it would only warp and indent and repel her touch like a blanket covering something secretive. She was talking about the rock, not the water though.

"You see the rock?" she said.

"What rock?"

"That one." She pointed. Her lips turned up in an ambiguous smile. It reminded me of hazy fog in the mornings. "It's half pink, the other half like charcoal. Flat at the top but round on all sides, as if you were to cut a bowling ball down the middle. It's sitting alone."

"Oh, that one. What about it?"

She twirled strands of her hair with a wet finger.

"Do you ever wonder where it came from?"

I said nothing. The sound of the creek gurgled in response. To me, it seemed startlingly similar to one of Schumann's piano sonatas we had been listening to earlier at the cottage.

"I've begun to wonder about everything. But especially rocks," she said.

"Why rocks?"

"Because they're so silent and stoic. No one really pays them any attention."

I pulled a piece of grass from the ground and crouched down next to her. She was watching the rock intently. I watched her.

"They look so permanent and eternal, like they were designed by someone, something a long time ago and installed there. There are large rocks, small rocks, great boulders and canyons and mountains and cliffs and heaps and pebbles and stones you kick around. And they appear to us that way, as they are. We only see them in one state, one form. We see that half bowling ball: from our point of view, that's the way it will be now 'til we die."

I looked at her. "But they are only a small fraction of something, is what you're saying."

She slipped her fingers through mine. They're warm. "Someone once told me a story, I can't remember who, I think maybe it was a teacher in elementary school—anyway, there was a rock a kid found in the backyard in their little man-made pond."

"Must have been a rich kid," I said.

"It was quite round, as if a pâtissier were kneading it as dough. It was the only blue stone in the entire pond, so no wonder it attracted the boy's attention." She looked off into the trees in the distance for a while. They seemed almost two-dimensional, like cardboard cutouts or as if a giant printing press had stamped them into the horizon. A dozen tiny birds fluttered in the air. The sun started to fade behind a sheen of clouds.

"When he lifted it up against sunlight, it would glisten and sparkle. The boy was convinced it was a marble of some sort, or a magical gem. In any case, he played with it and carried it around in his pocket for a long time. He loved it and would put it on the table whenever he had a test like a good luck charm. He hid it under his pillow when he slept at night. He never lost it. Whenever someone took it from him, he would fight until he could get it back. But after a year or two, like all children, he turned his attention to other things. This stone was left in the corner of his closet, and subsequently forgotten.

The boy grew up, but as he did, each year, the stone would grow a little larger. Of course, he wasn't aware of this fact. He would never look in that corner of the closet. It was placed behind several cardboard boxes. No one sane would expect a pebble to grow in size.