The Texture of Eternity  — Hettie’s Rock and Crystal Shop

Hundreds of gemstones
each one singular
glimmer from the shelves
an agate’s bands of colour spiral

time coiling
within the hue
collapsing inward

towards the centre
like a hypnotist’s eye

– a trance in stone?

When the pearl in the sky was still being spun

before the asteroids forgot their origins

there lived creatures.

Now, long-dead fossils,

once drowned
in the crackle
of cooling lava,
or lulled
by the whispers
of ancient tides
sealed
in shells of stone
resting beneath glass
displayed
for my longing gaze.
They still smell
of dirt,
of sea.
Fragments of a story,
pressed into
sedimentary rock
a history
caved in
by time.

Amethyst.
Twilight solidified.
A crystallised wine
never poured.
It's vivid violet
seeps
into my thoughts
like dusk
filtering through stone.
Cool to the touch
like morning metal.
Sunlight finds
the amethyst,
illuminates
spiderweb fractures
and milky clouds,
ghosts of where
the crystal
grew
then stopped.
A stutter
in time.
A smooth weight
settled in my palm
sure and still.
I brush my hand
against cool quartz

and forgotten light
I can feel
the earth
breath back.

On every surface

geodes,
jagged edges
catch
on soft fingertips that 

trace the consequence of centuries.
A chamber
with walls of quartz,
shaped
by shadow.
And when tapped,
a low echo
hollow,
secretive
the soft hum
of time
waiting.

Relics and records
of lives once lived.
Even extinction
leaves a trace.
I read
the petrified poems,
turn
the stone pages,
stare
at their frozen skeletons
and preserved footprints;
time, crystallised.
Evidence
they lived.

I cherish the imperfections:
the individuality,

the veins
in an agate,
like an old man’s hands;
the cracks,
in a fossil,
where grief once settled.

A sacred tide

of recollections,

cascading,

a rivulet.
Time has a weight

and eternity
has a texture.

Last,
I see
a shard
of sea glass.
All that remains;
a ghost of green
a whisper of life
once sharp.
Now worn smooth
its memory
faded
as one day
ours will be.

That’s what I think,
as I realise:
I hold time
in my hands.
And I, too,
will be buried,
and remembered
in pieces.