A Stone Skips Across the Surface of A Vast Lake

A stone skips across the surface of a vast, green lake, each bounce exposing unknown worlds, each world with unfathomable depths. The enduring ripples expand rapidly, further revealing the scenes below, still only granting fractionary glances of the realms overwhelming beneath the murky top. Two lovers, entangled with the other, between the sheets of the bridal bed. A black walled bedroom, where a girl sits amidst a scattering of papers, unraveling the story within the written riddle.

The stone leaps wide, moving the important and the unimportant, the history and the future, reality and imagination. It touches worlds unexpected, dividing attention, merging what should and should not be. A vision of heaven, a white celebration of love and fellowship for a Lord most perfect reigning over his chosen children upon a throne most high. A child sitting on the edge of a wooden coffee table, the four legs sinking into the plush blue carpet with the extra burden, between her two parents, mediating their conflict and keeping her small, fragile body between their thrashing, violent arms.

The stone continues, shorter hops now, from place to place, foregoing the usual linear path and forging one of its own. It chooses arbitrarily, randomly, divulging the mundane and the arresting without precedent, inflicting the emotions of the superficial and of the watery graves that the verdant deep hides. A grocery store, list in hand, an overwhelming flood of need to rush, to get to the next thing, to get to the next thing, to get to the next thing. A boy and girl in car, physical, moving as one without being one, gently pulling away as he softly whispers in her ear, “I don’t love you.”

The night closes over the lake, a drifting, sleepy darkness, and the stone’s movements increasingly minute. Nothing can be seen from the ripples, they themselves becoming invisible. The stone finally stops, sinking upon the last world, falling through it slowly, the details powerful and whole. It is a wedding. The groom, his men, the bridesmaids all stand in front of the altar, the priest smiling as the music swells. The loved ones sitting in the pews stand and turn around. The bride is walking down the aisle, the most beautiful desire in white, with eyes only for the man standing in front of her. She envisions with each step their future together, the better and the worse, the rich and the poor, the sick and the healthy. She feels his love and his adoration and sees in the beaming smile on his face that reaches to light up his eyes that he feels her love and adoration in return.

Their smiles reach to the lake, lighting the black with stars of delight as the stone settles in the lake bed for the night.