- 22 -

Sandstone

Kayla McVeigh

An index finger meeting the earth, rolling, and swirling. Our wrists draw lines in the 
sand. Dreaming of  the pressure, the pain that shapes it into something crystalline 

and desired. We teach the star-struck to manifest their love through the rose quartz 
of  this pressed sand. The forceful birth of  crystal. 

I’m supposed to hate the lines forming at the peeked corners of  my eyes and the ones 
drawing down from the edges of  my lips, left from a life of  dynamic expression.

I’m supposed to hate the cushioned layer my body has wrapped around itself  to hug 
my frame. Keeping my bones safe and everything in between. The runoff of  blood 

traveling through veins, dendritic or braided, rushing to press rose coloration into the 
skin and soft flesh. I’m supposed to hate this softening, it opposes the tightness and 

resistance I’m told to crave. 
I see grace in the strands of  silver hair. Secrets in the folds of  my skin. 

My body carries fragments of  history and my lifetime of  loving awareness. 
I do not find the rigid stiffness of  resistance beautiful. 

I find beauty in the softened hearts of  those moved by migrating wings. In the 
longing for the shoreline. I see it in my oval shape complexion, spun in the likeness 
of  my mother. I have seen her bloodied by the sickly thin hands of  those starved, 

seeking beauty in reshaping her form. 
I find beauty in the padding that cradles bone and frames the palms of  my hands, 

a lingering reminder of  soft baby pink. Plush and rose-kissed, cushioned from cruel 
pressures placed on matured bodies. They forget how no one thinks to correct the 

perfection of  an infant while they attack the loveliness of  a woman, a being. A being 
tangled in English ivy, roots binding her together as they twist through her fractures. 

A being called to life through moving bodies of  water. 
Deep, blue to black, alive. 

I’m supposed to scrub away the earth from my skin, the very clay from which I was 
made. My shape, thrown from between the joining palms of  my parents. Tangled, in 
a moment, their bodies brought together as the hands of  Christ creating life through 

prayer. 
If  it is my nature to be sandstone then I do not wish to harden so that I fight the 

weathering that is just as much a part of  my being as any other point in my life, as 
any other part of  my body. 

Perhaps I will meet with wandering streams where I will dissolve down to soft silty 
earth.

 Mixing with the stirring current, breathing, alive.
I would be just as beautiful.

- Best of  Poetry -