I.

I grew up by a rocky beach. I was more attuned to cutting my feet on shells and jagged edges than digging them into sand. The Massachusetts water was always frigid; come August, it became just bearable. There was a jetty made from large rocks marking the end of the beach, and we’d walk it because it gave us purpose and I liked jumping from one face to another. Near the end there was a big rockless gap where the tide would whoosh in and out, and I’d watch it in fear, always scared of falling in, always navigating around it very carefully, asking for a hand.

II.

In high school one of my go-to AIM away messages was a few lines from Simon and Garfunkel’s “I Am a Rock,” which my friend Caroline introduced me to. I’d always dreamed of being the sort of person who could build walls and deep, mighty fortresses, but it turns out I am more Jell-O than stone.

III.

My ex, we’ll call him John, is from one of two places in the world where fairy stones naturally occur. The other is in Brazil, somewhere on the coast. Somewhere more exotic than southern Virginia. We visited his hometown and drove out to the woods in an old pickup to find some. His father’s best friend, the one who had just given John a gun for his birthday, right in front of me, first time I ever saw a shotgun, taught me to look out for their lines in the earth. Fairy stones have two straight and intersecting ridges that hint at the shape of a cross, and enterprising locals find them and clean them and file them down and carve them out into t-shapes, to turn the hint into a form that someone might buy. A naturally occurring crucifix. I have a whole bag of the rough ones somewhere, the ones I pulled from the road’s edges, or maybe I gave them to my mother, because she also collects small things from the earth. On the way back to the house we stopped at a gas station that sold finished fairy stone crosses attached to various things: keychains, jewelry. John got a gun that weekend, and I got a necklace.

IV.

In Thailand we heard about a rock that was fifty feet high and prime for snorkeling around and jumping off of. We hitched to the beach and swam out and my goggles filled with water because I’d bought the cheapest ones I could find. I cut my hand climbing up and felt, for the first time, the stubborn and palpable knowledge that I might make myself die, and thought okay, and kept climbing. Our new friend Alex nearly slipped when he jumped off first. Then Mariel went too, and I was last and alone and I jumped towards them, screaming and leaping and whooshing and then slapping, my top coming off, a gasp at the surface, more screaming. All Mariel and I could talk about that day was feeling alive and feeling free, the two tenets of our new life, and the day after that we cried together outside of a tattoo parlor, and the day after that we left.

V.

The first night we kissed, my hand found the collection of black little rocks I’d been keeping in the pocket of my parka. They all came from the same rocky island beach in Maine, all long and slim and smooth and slightly bent, like your stupid fingers that I love so much. I have no idea why I decided to give you one, since I’d developed such an attachment to them, and fingered the little pocket collection anytime I was feeling unmoored. But I was high on promise and it appears I am reckless in love so I gave it to you, a grand and tiny gesture, a sharp flirt. Later I’d say something funny about that night like, I fed you some pizza and I immediately knew we were going to fuck, but mostly I felt electric and scared, and I was right to.

VI.

You’d been gone for only a few days and I was back home, Easter weekend. The beach was cold and grey, just the way I like it in the months that aren’t summer. I wore a coat and bare feet, searching the ground for something I’d like to give you, writing bad poems in my head and feeling sick with miss. I thought it might be cute to send you two rocks, one for you to throw into the Pacific, one for you to keep, because I like to force my sentiment on other people, and even if it is small and dead a rock can connect two live human souls. I never made it to the post office.

VII.

When I visited you I carried around a perfectly round smooth grey Alaskan rock with me as a talisman the way some people carry around crystals. I almost gave it to you and then did not, telling myself it was an act of fortitude, a first step in moving on and letting go, all the boring things I must eventually do. It sat at the bottom of my bag surrounded by sand. I am proud of my withholding, mostly because the rock is so beautiful, and I like having things.

VIII.

I am back in Maine this week and I am cultivating a growing pile of rocks, none of them long and bent like the smooth black finger rocks, but still nice in their own right and deserving of a good home. I found one that looks like a manatee. I found the perfect worry stone and it actually works, imagine that. Others are skinny-flat and smooth and others are cushion-like and plump but they are all in the same family, either round or oval or pleasantly teardrop-shaped. I have a type. I will bring them back to the bedroom that I have filled with other small things and I will tell myself that they mean something and I will build my own beach.