Heirlooms

There is a stone sinking to the bottom of a lake. Spinning and twirling around and around to expose two initials. It doesn’t matter if they are mine though I know that they are

Gently it hits the bottom, but still hard enough that it creates a cloud of what can only really be described as gunk. After minutes the cloud too will settle and all that will be left,

Are the initials, somehow perched on the surface of the stone, facing what is left of the sun this deep under water. And I walk away. Leaving behind the stone, my heirloom to the lake.

All I take with me now are the memories. How the stone felt in my hand, how the water felt on my toes, and how carving initials into stone isn’t as easy as it looks on TV.

So many memories have sunken with the stone, though many I take with me. Perhaps I’ll make new ones, though there’s no way of knowing. Time isn’t my stone to carve.

When I get home they ask where I have been, but how can I tell them every place I have been when I rarely know myself. Instead I sit down at the table, let my weight settle.

Like the gunk in the water I can finally come to a rest. Breathe in the air like the water in the lake, let it fill my lungs like the hull of a boat, wrecked at sea in the darkest of storms

I do not tell of my heirloom in the lake. Nor do I say I can feel my heart break. Instead I sigh softly and I rise to my feet, wipe the bead of sweat off my brow as if ready to begin the next challenge

But it’s over now. The stone, as silent as the grave, yet speaks for a life once lived. For how else will they know I was here? How will they know that I lived at all?