“Pebble” by Tiffany Jade Colón, NYC

topic: LOVE AND HEARTBREAK medium: TEXT

Sometimes I become unsure of whether or not you happened to me.  I remember finding you; much like a child comes across a particularly handsome pebble.  Moving it with the tips of their shoes, examining its sharp edges and changing colors, they finally place it in their pocket for reasons known not even to themselves.

I remember that I watched you every once in a while, across a classroom.  Voices going foggy in my mind as I imagined exactly what you were.  Fumbling with the pebble in my pocket I gave you a voice and a personality that perfectly suited my own.  Sometimes you smiled a sideways smile, a half one.  I wondered what it would take to curl the other half of your lips as well.  I would decide it was some witty remark of my own and that it would even make you blush.

I remember being broken.  Although sometimes I remember broken as ignited, depending on the state I am in when I stop to think back.  Either way, in an attempt to put myself back together or to light a fire in something else, I met you.

Your nervous hands shoved deep into your pockets.  I wondered if you had a pebble in there too.  Three shots of rum still tingled on my tongue and chased my own nerves away.  Your nervous smile was a full one.  Both sides of your lips rose up, almost to your eyes.

And then you are a quick flash of cold, shaking but firm hands.  Of whiskey mixed with rum and Bustello Café.  Of the Coney Island beach where I stood next to you feeling bigger than ever.  Of the smell of books and the poetry that slipped off you.  Of embers rising where you stood placing band aids and clear tape over the cracked pieces of me that had been threatening to slip off days before.

It passed.  Flames subsided, thoughts filed away.  I tossed my pebble into a lake and watched it sink.  Still I sometimes put my hands in my pockets to see if it’s still there.  When it is not I begin to wonder if it ever really was.

Author: Tiffany J Colón