Issue 13
Rock
Julie Aldegarie
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Keepsake
That summer, Nina found an arrowhead. June's incessant rains dislodged the weapon from its burial site in the meadow, and its cratered surface scooped up handfuls of the fragile sunlight. It lay in her palm like a flattened egg. She grazed her fingertips along its fractured edges and across its mud-flecked face. The small rock's smooth, cool skin felt like her mother's cheek.
At the funeral, whispers of suicide had floated in the air like bees, persistent, stinging. Her mother had left no note, only a bed that she slept in more and more, laundry churning in the washer, and Nina in school. Her father had picked her up that Friday. When she went to bed that night, he still sat on the front porch, silent, staring out at the meadow where, twelve years before, he had been married.
Nina wrapped the arrowhead in tissue and put it in a box on her dresser. The stone reminded her of her mother, solid and enduring on the surface, yet weak along some hidden plane, and so easily shattered when the right blow was struck in just the right spot.
~Julie Aldegarie
Julie Aldegarie lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. She has more than a passing interest in how human nature is reflected in the natural world. Email.
© 2003 by Julie Aldegarie. All Rights Reserved.
© Copyright 2003 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.