They are tiny, one that brilliant blue of the sky just at dusk and one that milky white of cataracts and marble. Among the many stones and shells on my dressers, they are my favorites, these two pieces of sea glass.

As Fanta and wine bottles, old windows and discarded growlers, these tiny shards began larger, more substantive, more clearly purposed. Then, through overuse or neglect or the sheer happenstance of life, they found their way to the tossing sea.

They are shattered to shards and then buffeted to softness. Their edges become smooth and curved as if some Master has spun them on a lathe. What was once clear and transparent becomes frosty with the scars of time amongst the waves. They are changed. They are roughed up. They are recreated.

Soon, they roll out into the sand where people like me scour that field of tiniest glass beads to find their larger cousins. I fill my pockets with shards gone soft, and I carry them home – from Canada and Scotland and Italy. I lay them out, reminders that everything is repurposed – into words, into stories, into scars that mesh perfectly with the wounds of those we meet.

Someday I will fill a glass jar with these pieces of sea glass – of blue and red and ivory, green that can only be named for the water from which it was reborn. Someday that jar will sit on my desk to remind me of what it is to write, what it is to live.