I am the stone.  The stone that seals a body in a tomb.  I have been around so very long.  The humans talk in terns of days and weeks and months and years.  I think in terms of eons.

I could have been anything or even left alone.  But the humans can’t leave anything alone.  They are always rearranging everything to suite their own needs.

Recently I was taken out of the ground and then chiseled.  I was shaped in such an odd way.  Not round like a ball, or with smooth rounded edges where I could roll along easily.  No, more like a cork that fits just perfectly.

I was taken to a place where I would rest – a place with more stone – a tomb.  And there I waited.  The humans would have thought it a long wait.  For me, it was a short time.

And then it was today.  The humans call it Friday.  Today I learned my fate – to seal in a body – a dead body – in.

The body was laid inside the tomb with great care.  Who was this human that was laid inside?  It wasn’t the one who had bought the tomb, or had me carved.  That human was carrying the dead man.

Yet, this dead man was familiar to me.  I remember his footsteps in recent times – when he was younger and he would climb and run and jump.  He was happy then.  Now he is dead.  His body wrapped in linen to cover the wounds of death.

Death has requirements.  It requires that certain things be shut and sealed away.  I and those like me have been tools of death for so long.  We know death intimately because death can’t harm us.  But death speaks to us.  Like us, death is cold, hard and been around a long time.

Death tells us to seal away life.  To seal away and separate the dead from the living.  To seal away those that are different.  Death requires the hush of silence – no open discussion about what could have been or really what truly was.  Death requires the living to seal away their hurt and sorrow because the rest of the world has moved on to a new distraction.  Death requires silence from talking with one another – how can there be wars (which will yield more victims for death to feast on) if there is communication?  Death requires that reason be sealed away.  Death shrouds itself in fear and the humans willingly oblige.  They won’t even talk openly about death, but use coded language out of fear.  They remain sealed in a tomb of fear.

Yet, I know that death also fears an end to it’s reign.  It has told me so.  And today, death came to me and yelled at me.  Death was agitated.  It tried to make a demand of me – to stay sealed.  This is unlike death.  Instead of wearing fear with pride, it was fearful.  The only reason I can determine was because of the human laid inside this tomb.  Who is this person that strikes fear into death?  Who is this that makes death tremble and demand anything of a stone?  Who is this that is laid, apparently dead, yet still commands the emotions of death itself?

I will wait and see if anything happens.  That’s what I do.  I am the stone that seals a tomb…for now.