STONE

The smoke from my cigarette rises to the glass table top, forming rings of grey, undulating into bigger circles, centripetal waves, ephemeral, disappearing into the waft of a sibilant breeze, reminding me that I can, must, blink or else I'll turn into stone.
Stone. Booker Prize-winning author A.S. Byatt has, in her Little Black Book of Stories, a short story called "The Stone Woman," which is an understatedly poignant tale of a woman whose grief turns her into stone. Jade, Agate, emerald, lapiz lazuli, ruby, diamond, quartz... How beautiful she must have looked, what splendor, how glorious it must have been to be something entirely different from, or, to be only an image of, what one used to be; to sense nothing, feel nothing, be nothing.
To be stone and not be. To not be anything but stone.
I have long ago taught myself, little by little, to close myself into a bud whenever I feel the threat of pain. People have called me hard-headed, stoic, cruel, stone-hearted. I have been misunderstood as being unfeeling. Heartless, even.
It's a trick, you see.
Consider: a fist clenching into itself; a dancer curling her body into an imperfect, human (but, perhaps I am being redundant) circle; a hand gripping an object it does not want to let go of.
Pain or no, turning oneself into stone is a skill that can be learned, an art that can be perfected. Grief is an unnecessary catalyst when one has mastered this craft. Because it is a craft that one has to go back to learning again, and again, if one is to be an expert at it.
I am slowly getting there. Just a few more polishes, and I will be the stone-woman I have always wanted to be.
For now, though, I must remember to blink. For now.