The Infinite Starr

There is stone that reads throw me sitting on a random shelf.

Nobody remembers who put it there.

That is the strange part.

It isn’t decorative.

It isn’t polished enough to belong beside the books, candles, and little porcelain angels collecting dust beneath the stained-glass window.

It is an ordinary gray stone.

Heavy.

Cold.

Imperfect.

Across its surface, carved deep enough that the words cannot be rubbed away, are two simple words.

THROW ME.

The room belongs to an old chapel that hasn’t decided whether it is abandoned.

People still come.

They just don’t come for the reasons they used to.

Some arrive looking for forgiveness.

Some arrive looking for answers.

Some come because grief has nowhere else to sit.

And some come because they enjoy standing beneath beautiful ceilings while deciding what is wrong with everyone else.

Those are usually the ones who notice the stone first.

They pick it up.

Turn it over.

Feel its weight.

Then they read the little brass plaque beneath it.

The one without sin must go first.

Nobody has ever thrown it.

Not once.

At least that’s what they say.

Sin.

What a peculiar word.

Humans have always been magnificent at creating words for things they cannot completely explain.

Sin became one of them.

A fence built around human behavior.

A warning sign nailed into the earth.

Do this.

Don’t do that.

Stand here.

Don’t stand there.

Love this person.

Don’t love that one.

Say these words.

Never say those.

Wear this.

Believe that.

Kneel.

Confess.

Repent.

Behave.

And somewhere along the way, mankind took the enormous mystery of being alive and began writing rules in the margins.

Perhaps some rules were necessary.

Society requires boundaries because humans, left entirely to their own devices, have historically demonstrated a remarkable ability to turn paradise into a crime scene.

But there are things that don’t require commandments to understand.

Cruelty is cruelty.

Taking a life that does not belong to you is wrong.

Hurting women is wrong.

Hurting children is wrong.

Hurting anyone simply because you possess the power to do it is wrong.

Betrayal wounds people.

Adultery destroys things that cannot always be rebuilt.

Violence leaves fingerprints long after the hands responsible have disappeared.

Call those things sin if you want.

Call them evil.

Call them immoral.

Call them human failure.

But sometimes I wonder whether we became so obsessed with naming darkness that we forgot the simpler instruction.

Don’t be cruel.

That one apparently needed a larger font.

Because something strange happens in places where people gather beneath sacred ceilings.

The cruelest voices are occasionally the loudest ones singing.

They know every word.

Every verse.

Every rule.

Every punishment.

They can tell you exactly where everyone else is going when they die.

They seem unusually certain about hell for people who have never been there.

Or perhaps they have.

Perhaps hell was never beneath us.

Perhaps it has always been something humans learned to carry.

The woman sitting three rows ahead of me whispered about someone’s divorce.

The man beside her nodded solemnly.

Someone across the aisle discussed another woman’s clothes.

Another complained about a child they believed hadn’t been raised correctly.

Judgment traveled quietly through the chapel like incense.

Everybody breathed it in.

Nobody noticed.

The stone remained on the shelf.

Throw me.

I stared at it.

It stared back.

Funny thing about stones.

They don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are.

Humans could learn something from geology.

Outside, the afternoon disappeared remarkably fast.

One minute sunlight poured through the stained glass, painting the wooden floor red, blue, gold, and violet.

The next, shadows stretched across the pews.

Blink.

Another hour gone.

Blink.

Another year.

Blink.

Someone you loved became someone you used to know.

Blink.

The thing you swore you would eventually do became the thing you regret never doing.

Time doesn’t announce itself when it leaves.

It doesn’t slam the door.

It doesn’t write goodbye letters.

It simply stops being yours.

Lately, things have begun closing themselves.

Doors I kept propped open.

Relationships I kept resuscitating.

Promises I kept dragging behind me like wounded animals because I couldn’t admit they were already dead.

Some endings apparently don’t require permission.

They arrive carrying their own paperwork.

Sign here.

Or don’t.

The ending remains.

Perhaps that is mercy disguised as destruction.

Because there are things we know we need to release but continue holding because familiarity has convinced us it is love.

People.

Places.

Jobs.

Versions of ourselves.

Old arguments.

Old wounds.

Old possibilities.

The chances we didn’t take.

God, those are heavy.

Maybe heavier than the stone.

We carry them differently.

I should have gone.

I should have said something.

I should have left.

I should have stayed.

I should have tried.

I should have known.

Should.

The most haunted word in the English language.

A graveyard disguised as a verb.

I stood and walked toward the shelf.

The stone was colder than I expected.

THROW ME.

I wrapped my fingers around it.

There were people I could have thrown it at.

We all have a list.

Don’t pretend you don’t.

People who underestimated us.

People who lied.

People who disappeared when standing beside us became inconvenient.

People who watched us drown and complained about the splashing.

People who were cruel when kindness would have cost them absolutely nothing.

Those are perhaps the hardest ones to forgive.

Not because of what they did.

Because of how easily they did it.

I thought about them.

Every face.

Every betrayal.

Every moment I had swallowed words because retaliation would have made me resemble the person standing opposite me.

The stone became heavier.

Then something appeared beneath it.

I hadn’t noticed the second inscription before.

It was smaller.

Almost hidden beneath my palm.

Harm one. Harm them all.

I read it twice.

Then again.

Perhaps that is the part humans have misunderstood.

Every cruelty travels.

Someone wounds a child.

The child becomes an adult carrying the wound.

The adult enters a relationship.

The wound enters with them.

Someone else gets cut.

That person carries the blood somewhere else.

Generation after generation, everyone insists they are only responding to what happened to them.

Nobody remembers who threw the first stone.

Maybe nobody did.

Maybe we’ve simply been passing it around.

I placed it back on the shelf.

Outside, the sky had turned that strange shade of purple that exists for only a few minutes between daylight and darkness.

The chapel bell rang.

Once.

Then twice.

Then stopped.

Someone behind me said quietly,

“It’s time.”

I turned.

Nobody was there.

Of course nobody was there.

That would have made this story too easy.

But I had been hearing those words everywhere lately.

It’s time.

In conversations.

In dreams.

In the strange silence before falling asleep.

In mornings when something felt different although nothing had changed.

It’s time.

Time for what?

That had always been the question.

Then I realized I already knew.

There is a thing I have always said I was going to do.

Everyone has one.

The impossible thing.

The irresponsible thing.

The thing buried beneath mortgages, schedules, obligations, fear, exhaustion, and the opinions of people who wouldn’t have the courage to attempt it themselves.

We talk about it casually because saying someday protects us from having to begin today.

Someday I’ll write it.

Someday I’ll build it.

Someday I’ll leave.

Someday I’ll go.

Someday I’ll become the person I keep imagining.

Someday is a beautiful place.

Nobody has ever been there.

And suddenly I understood why everything had been disappearing.

Perhaps nothing was being taken from me.

Perhaps the path was being cleared.

There is a difference.

A terrifying one.

The people who weren’t meant for the next chapter had begun removing themselves.

The situations I had outgrown became unbearable.

Things I once tolerated suddenly felt impossible to carry.

Even time seemed different.

Faster.

Sharper.

Less willing to negotiate.

The chances we didn’t take began haunting the chances still waiting.

So the plan began.

Quietly.

No announcements.

No grand declarations.

There are certain dreams you shouldn’t tell everyone about while they are still learning how to breathe.

Let people think nothing is happening.

Let them assume you have accepted your place.

Let them believe you have become predictable.

Meanwhile, build.

Piece by piece.

Brick by brick.

Word by word.

Dollar by dollar.

Day by day.

Until the impossible thing begins looking suspiciously possible.

And when it is finally time to leave, don’t fill the carriage with everyone you’ve ever known.

Take the people who stood beside you when there was nothing to gain from standing there.

Take the ones who believed before there was evidence.

Take the ones who defended your name in rooms you never entered.

Take the ones who didn’t require success before deciding you were worthy of kindness.

Those are your people.

The rest can watch.

And some will.

They’ll look twice.

Maybe they’ll say,

Damn.

Why didn’t I?

Why didn’t I believe?

Why didn’t I go?

Why didn’t I stay?

Why wasn’t I kinder?

Why did I laugh when they told me what they were going to become?

But that question will belong to them.

Not you.

The chapel had grown dark.

I walked toward the exit.

Halfway there, I stopped.

Something bothered me.

The stone.

I turned around.

The shelf was empty.

I walked back.

Nothing.

No gray stone.

No brass plaque.

No words.

Just a pale circle in the dust where something had been sitting for what looked like years.

I searched beneath the shelf.

Behind the books.

Under the nearest pew.

Nothing.

Then the chapel bell rang once more.

I looked toward the stained glass.

For a fraction of a second, I saw my reflection.

Older somehow.

Not old.

Just farther away.

Standing somewhere I hadn’t reached yet.

She looked happy.

Not the loud kind.

The dangerous kind.

The kind belonging to someone who no longer needs permission.

Then the light shifted.

She disappeared.

I stood there alone.

That was when I finally understood.

The stone had never been asking to be thrown at anyone.

It had been waiting to see whether I would carry it with me.

All this time I thought the test was whether I could forgive the people who deserved the stone.

It wasn’t.

The test was whether I would become them once I finally had enough power to throw it.

I opened my hand.

There was nothing inside it.

Outside, the night waited.

The road beyond the chapel disappeared into darkness, and for once I didn’t need to know exactly where it ended.

Behind me were all the things that had already decided to leave.

Ahead was the thing I had spent years promising myself I would eventually do.

There are moments when life asks politely.

There are moments when it whispers.

And then there are moments when every clock, every ending, every strange coincidence and every empty place where something used to be begins saying the same thing.

It’s time.

So there I must go.

Not because I know what waits for me.

Not because I am without fear.

Not because everyone deserves forgiveness.

And certainly not because I am without sin.

I go because the shelf is empty.

I go because my hands are empty.

I go because the people worth taking already know who they are.

And somewhere beyond the darkness is a life I have spent years talking about as though it belonged to someone else.

Tonight, I finally understood the inscription.

THROW ME.

It never meant the stone.

It meant the life I was afraid to leave behind.