The Texture of Eternity

Hundreds of gemstones, each one singular, glimmer from the shelves. An agate’s bands of colour spiral inward, toward the centre — a trance in stone? Time coils within the hue, collapsing inward, like a hypnotist’s eye. • • • Long-dead fossils, once drowned in the crackle of cooling lava, or lulled by the whispers of ancient tides. Now sealed in shells of stone, resting beneath glass, displayed for my longing gaze. A tremor, when I touch something so ancient. (They still smell of dirt, the sea.) Fragments of a story, pressed into sedimentary rock — a history caved in by time. • • • Amethyst — twilight, solidified. A crystallised wine, never poured. Its vivid violet seeps into my thoughts, cool and slow, like dusk filtering through stone. Cool to the touch, like morning metal. Sunlight finds the amethyst, illuminating spiderweb fractures and small, milky clouds — ghosts of where the crystal grew, then stopped. A stutter in time. Now I see the blemishes, the flaws I hadn’t noticed before. A smooth weight settled in my palm — sure, and still. As I press my hand to cool quartz, it feels as though the earth breathes back. • • • Geodes on every surface. Jagged edges catch on sof