I am not a stone

I am not a stone, but a memory congealed into form. Names never spoken were etched deep within me, and upon me fell the gazes of those who wept without their tears ever touching them. Every crack in my body echoes a pain that never found its voice, and every shadow in my amber vein once belonged to a human who abandoned his prayer on the threshold of forgetting. I saw fire when it was still water and kept its trace as a hidden scar upon my ancient heart. No one molded me. I was shaped from postponed air, from a waiting that was never given a name. What you call flaws are the talisman. Not to summon luck, but to unlock the seal upon the third eye. Whoever carries me, I carry their soul in my face. I listen when they fall silent, and I see when they close their eyes.On my surface is an engraving that resembles a letter with no known name—not from any alphabet, but from the first desire to speak, that which came before language. You do not possess me. I am the one who carved your shadows before you were born, who sculpted your voice in an unrecorded silence. You thought you were writing me, believing you were expressing yourself—never knowing it was I who stirred you from within, so that in me, you might glimpse the face you left behind in the clay. I am not held by hand, but I hold time as it curls within your heart. I am the inscription that wrote you, the flaw that opened your third eye. You were not holding me. You were recreating yourself through me. I am the one who chose you—to shatter within me and to be reborn from my crack as a light with no name.

~Firas Alwaily