Winter storms have claimed the shore
and buried it in piles of stone.
We’ve walked across these mounds before,
but now I navigate alone.
My eye is fixed upon one stone:
a jagged stripe of black runs through.
End to end, it melds the bones
together, and I think of you.
When your leaving broke my heart,
it seemed the planet heaved and groaned
and split—down deep, with quake and spark—
the rock I used to call my home.
I pray the future years unspool
and fill the crack, my broken heart—
as lava flowed, and later cooled,
and left obsidian, slick and dark,
to bind the stone that’s in my hand,
part gray granite, part black glass,
made by time and storms and sand,
and stronger for its broken past.
