[1] White stone, black stone: you clear heart the former, my distended one the latter. You now carry both in your hands of alabaster, lamplight, night mischief, ghost piano arpeggios on cafe tables.

[2] There is self possession in how you now possess me: After warming my hands on your belly (if cowries were currency again, I would be instantly rich), I walk out into the sea of people, glinting with silvers of mica.

[3] You ask, without hesitancy, "Buy me these", pointing to a a cheap pair of gypsy earrings. I do, and then you say, "help me put them on", and I thread wire into the petals of your ears.

[4] Love is what compresses time: those days and nights have hardened into rock, layer over memory's layer which I tunnel into to discover these raw beginnings of song.

Note: A two year old poem on stones, written when I didn't have someone to give stones to.