Feel the stone against your skin.
It is the mountain before it was broken.
It is the riverbed before the water ran dry.
It is the weight that does not hurry,
the silence that does not scatter.
As you breathe, imagine roots threading down
through the floor, through soil,
into the dark places that never rush.
Your breath is wind moving through a forest:
slow, patient, bending branches,
never tearing them away.
The stone remembers what stillness feels like.
Let it teach your body.
Let it teach your heart.
Each exhale is a feather falling,
each inhale a soft tide returning.
You are not the storm.
You are the earth beneath the storm.
You are the deep water that does not boil.
Hold the stone.
Let its memory become yours.
Let its weight remind you:
You are allowed to rest.
This is my journey,
— Nate Long “Owl”