Pebble Forgotten, hidden in my pocket a speckled pebble nudges my thigh. I pull it out, balance it on my palm, it lies there, snug, precarious, resistant. Its sgraffito surface dances among the lines in my skin; heart line, head line, life line, a criss-cross confusion of vortices, elaborate patterns, helixes, whorls, fractal openings, a fate line, inscribed in a language I cannot read. As I hold it I’m torn between hurling it into the sea and preserving it as a geologic relic, a capsule moulded by time and shape shifting elements. How did you get that way? I ask it. How did you get that way? responds the pebble. We both shrug move on. Colin Pink
26
