I like rocks. I like stones. Pebbles are my friends. There’s something quite reassuring about their edges and their lines. I like to peer inside them at their sediment and colours, study the way the hours have formed their shapes.

I keep them on my windowsill next to the plants I can’t look after. I try to nurture the growing things, I feed and spray. I pick up the leaves as they fall but my fingers are pink and not green. Some things stay for a while, now and again they flourish but whether it’s the angle of the windowsill or the anger of the sun at my glass, I’m not sure. It’s such a sun filled kitchen and the windowsill calls out for plants. So I buy and I tend and I leave. Maybe it’s the leaving where it goes wrong. Maybe it’s the constant watching that they need. Maybe if I pull up a stool and stand a post, keep a weathered eye on them at all times, that I’ll spot the bugs as they approach and I’ll fire at them with my special order nozzled spray. Maybe if I never move from this spot I can head off the disease before it sets in. Maybe if I do nothing but watch them that they’ll be alright. That the sun won’t crisp their leaves, that the soil won’t gasp and shrink.

I like plants. I like their potential for growth, their searching roots, their sap fresh leaves. I like their short-lived promise and the rich dark stink of soil.
I pull up a stool and wait. Wait for the seconds to eat them, to watch them crumble again. I watch my stones next to them. They are reliable, they sit, they soak up the heat. They smile back at me, warm and unchanged. At least I can’t see their changes.
They watch me. I crumble in the photons that they absorb, my leaves dry out. The bugs come.

I like rocks, they give me a sense of permanence but it won’t last. I like to hold them and study their lines, to connect with the heat they’ve absorbed.
They clank and graunch against each other, they tell me that they’re solid – I understand.
The leaves drop, the water evaporates, the sun moves around us.
My stones wink at me, they know it’s only a matter of time.