Saturday 1 January 2011

January 1- Towers

One thing is interesting about our town- behind the suburb where the not-quite-poor look down on the not quite rich, there are two high pillars of stones. The higher by far is a natural phenomenon, created by some process I never understood, where every year since the world's creation a single smooth pebble would be added to the stack, continuously until today where it stretches further than any of us can see. The second is smaller, but still gigantic- it is a stack which people have added one stone to every year since they first came upon the earth. I have regularly attended our festivals on New Year's Day, where our Mayor climbs above the clouds with the now-new apex of our time, and my youngest memory is of seeing her face lit from the summit by the video-monitors we installed to protect such an ancient monument. It is nothing but history, after all, and there is nothing more commonly vandalised than that.

Our tower is stubby and slight, yet I still remember to lay the next stone every anniversary. If you squint at the ten or so stones you can yet pretend that our relationship is great, and that the thing we have constructed is in some way equal to the things we live beside, were created beside.
Each year you come and I squeeze your hand, and we promise each other our heart forever as we look up at the town's two towers, shooting upwards out of the sky.

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