Heart Shaped Stone

The first white heart shaped rock that tumbles past my legs makes me think of you. Instantly, I reach into the cascading water at my feet. Moving past, with an objective force that never dies, never loses its purpose. The little heart slips from between my fingers, hitting the ground with a bounce, then gliding on, just a hair above the stone filled landscape. I plunge into the waters, my fingers search for it. Beneath the weight of clear liquid, I open my eyes; the salt of heavy water does not sting, but I am solid in my purpose, only the single vision of your presence pushes me forward, searching for a gift. Submerged to my hips in warm waters, I am amid calm and tumultuous movement. It does what it must, what it knows without thought. Without teachers or cues, the waves push in and out, in and out…in and out. A constant… they move with the moon, caressing the weather, soothing the heat, screaming with the gathering of dark clouds. Entwined until the last bomb extinguishes all, until the planet freezes or blows again into the smallest of particles.
Will I laugh, lost in the blackness of your chin, among the shadows created by a myriad of twisted vines? Will I cry, devastated by the loss of your warm arms? Will I transcend the ideas of simple emotions, my thoughts disguised as truth? Will ideas fade into the nothingness of light I have heard of but cannot remember?
Matter, water, spirit, blending into the strangeness of a forgotten invisible flower. I dwell in the land of stones, multicolored rocks with the letters of your name spelled upon them. But to the remains of my mind, they are simple symbols, devoid of meaning. I see only curved lines, or perpendicular arrows that intersect. There are no sounds in this land, no language that I can hear.
When will the stones begin to talk? What must I learn to receive their gift?
An old cotton skirt hangs off my hips in shreds. Barefoot, I climb small hills of tiny rocks. At each crest, I see a thousand other mounds in each direction. I walk over them gingerly, the pebbles in my pocket create a subtle symphony for my steps, matching the rhythm that forces itself from my body. My bare breasts jiggle with each movement, dark from the sun, they give homage to the light each morning at daybreak. A wanderer in the desert landscape of a thousand stones, I journey, with only a memory to keep me sane.
The water, the heart shaped stone…did you ever have it within your grasp?
Or was it only an attempt quickly washed away by an incoming wave?
Does it sit upon your altar, or within the shrine made of mermaid bones and silken fish tails, where tiny teeth and lost jewels create the mandalas that decorate underwater graves?