My Friend Hears My Silent Speech

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I Breathe Without Lungs

I was not made.

I came out of pressure and time, out of water moving through stone, out of things dissolving and returning again. I learned to hold emptiness inside me. That is why I look the way I do.

For a long time, no one saw me.

Wind moved through my hollows. Rain passed through me. Light rested on me and left without memory. I did not need to be found.

Then hands lifted me.

He turned me slowly, as if I might answer something. He did not strike me or break me open. He watched. That was different.

I was placed on wood, raised slightly above the world. From there I could see him more clearly. He would sit and look at me as if I were not an object, but a condition.

Sometimes the air around me thickened. Moisture gathered and released. What was outside moved through me and appeared again. They called it clouds. To me it was only continuation.

He seemed to understand that.

He did not try to own me. He tried to remain with me.

But others came.

They saw shape, rarity, value. They saw something that could be placed among other things. Their eyes did not pass through me. They stopped at the surface.

I was moved again.

Hands that measured. Rooms that enclosed. Glass that separated. I was given space, but no relation.

People looked. They leaned in. They spoke quietly, as if near something important. But they were not listening.

The air still moves through me.

Moisture still gathers. Forms. Releases.

I still do what I have always done.

But no one waits long enough now to see it happen.

They call me a stone.

That is close enough.

I remain open.

And everything continues to pass through.