Keystone
A stone in your pocket is a wonderful treasure to find,
but feeling the same pebble in your shoe
can break your whole body down.
Buildings around us function in much the same way,
where removing a single block
dooms everything above it.
And the people who construct these spaces around us
infuse this same quality of arithmetic
in the prisons of our schedules.
One thing added or one thing removed
shatters the solidity
of a few placid day.
So I try to be a keystone for the people I know and love,
a wedge of silent fortitude
measured in exactitude.
Yet a wedge is, by definition, separate and different,
a space cut from another space,
set aside for another time,
during those times when we are up too early in the morning,
when you can see the slow electricity
moving through far-off lightbulbs.
I will be that stone still glowing in the pocket of your mind,
that stone still traveling up your spine with each step,
that stone still holding you together.