stone

stone

I'd been carrying something, 
clean towels?
when I picked up a little stone

with the front pad of my right

bare foot on the cold cement 
basement floor: step one shake stay

step three shake stay

until it still

                  stays and my full weight's

a bruise there, like the tip

of a pen held too long

on the paper so that the blot

spreads itself into the white

clear nothing. 

                        The wet I want,

the dark heart, I admit, is

the not fading, and then the out

against that white, that no-

thing until it’s lifted…

                        maybe, before I stepped,

I didn’t know I wanted

the stone, though it’s safe

to say I don’t unwant it now.

Even hundreds of millions of steps after

it’s gone into powder 

from other feet

it’s not really gone.

Because it weighed

something and I weigh something

and there’s a prick of heat

that’s always a hawk, the burr

in gravity that makes one head

look up from their plate at a family

friendly dinner: the rapid bare

foot in the flaring glance, when 

shoes began to matter (or the lack

of them) the quick prick into

                                    limp limp limp grip

the wall

and lift the foot.  There it is,

some preciously obscure

assault thrust between the bones

as by a thumb

as by an eye, as, 

because I won’t know

until I pull it out, I decide

I need  the skin’s pink puncture,

wet for the guest, the guest

seeing it all with a pause

a start
and 
a pause,

and a napkin to their lips.