A rock

Or like a rock

Like cool molten magma squeezed by time and scarred by elements formed and deformed over the passage of years and decades into centuries and beyond

Waiting only for a kid to pick you up and fling you sideways to watery glory, one chance to fly and make ripples onto the face of things, skeetering and fleeting and skipping until the weight of what you are catches up and drags you into the depths below

Where nothing really matters.

And that’s it. The ripple is gone, the waters are still – as if you never existed

As if you never were flung, sidearm across the pond

As if you never took flight and felt free from the weight of what you are, the result of years and decades into centuries of elements and sediment gathered and pressed, heated and cooled, formed and reformed, a collection of leaves and twigs, dirt and sand expelled in anger and transformed into the cool, impersonal nonchalance of granite.

A rock

Or like a rock

Like occasionally useful but mostly ignored.