Skipping Stones

By Peter Bowden

 


The boy bent low at the pond’s edge, knees pressed into the cool moss. The air was still, except for the occasional tremor of a dragonfly cutting through its own reflection. In his hand, a smooth stone waited flat, gray, and perfect as if shaped by time just for this moment. He drew his arm back and let it go, wrist flicking, breath held. The stone kissed the surface once, twice, three times before vanishing into a circle of ripples that spread like gentle laughter across the water.

He watched the rings move outward, touching reeds, the bank, the shadow of an oak that leaned close as if to listen. Each ripple seemed to carry a thought the kind that begins deep and quiet: where do things go when they disappear? How many stones had he thrown over the years, each one a wish or a question, each one swallowed by the pond without an answer? The water shimmered, patient and secretive, a mirror that never told all it knew.

Evening settled softly. The boy, now a man, stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. Somewhere, a frog began its song. He smiled at the ripples still whispering across the pond and thought maybe the answers weren’t meant to come back; maybe they lived out there, in the widening circles, finding their own way through the world, just as he once had.

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