I was not the first place
you landed.
Further north, across the bay, where that spit of land
curls in on itself.
A primordial fist clawing
back at the sea.
Protective, yet fierce.
Protective yet—
fierce.
I was never meant to be—
here.
I am a glacial erratic.
Born of Gondwana, carried by Pangea;
A cruel whimsy of the epochs deposited me here—
elsewhere.
Waiting to be exposed.
I am glacial, erratic.
I was whole; for a time,
for millennia.
Laid bare but not yet trespassed upon.
Until you wrenched me from my foundations
of sand.
Paraded through the town, first riven in two and then slowly abraded.
One piece of me found its way into a home as a doorstop. A door,
stop.
Another to the Smithsonian, branded with the inscription “Broken off from the Mother Rock.”
Broken,
off from the mother.
I was never meant to be revealed, to be revered.
But you erected a baldaquin over me.
Not to enshrine but to entomb.
A mordant gate at my base keeps the sea from rushing in to engulf me.
To envelop me. To absolve me.
They were always meant to come.
To gaze down upon me, mouths slack-jawed in disappointment and regret.
“I came all this way for that?”
Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.
I came all this way—
for that.
Elizabeth Hashimura is a freelance translator living and working in rural Japan.