BROWSE Columns
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This one’s between you and me: There’s a little speckled pebble that I bury along the path by the river. I dig it up as I walk and I run my thumb over its surface, scraping off a micron or two on each pass, digging, delving deeper, and there’s a thumb-sized dent now, and I’ll never tell you or anyone where it is because the first time I found it I was sitting in the river watching the water divert around my form and taking solace in that little temporary impact, and I wanted advice on how to live forever so I asked and the wind blew and rustled the reeds behind me and, don’t laugh, I cried and cried even though I don’t speak wind and I cried because I was embarrassed for crying but then I was embarrassed that I was embarrassed so god I cried more and I noticed the little bits of rock dust embedded in my thumb pad and I knew that even when I was gone this rock would bear my thumbprint, buried under the earth, and I will have made a mark on this place; a dent in geological time. An epoch-spanning, immortal shadow thumb, digging.
William Clickard is a poet and artist working as a prepress operator in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He has received degrees in Creative Writing and Graphic Design from Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania.
