Diamond

They say diamonds are a girl's best friend, and I didn't know why till I was 12.

Then i got to pick out my aunt's engagement ring in the jewelry store and as i sat rejecting sparkling after sparkling diamond i started wondering why they all looked the same.

And i asked 'where do diamonds come from?'

The store manager laughed and said to me 'from mines of course, they are stones after all. Expensive ones but still stones.'

And that really surprised me because diamonds aren't sparkly stones, not really.

Stones are jagged and misshapen and so different from each other, but all these diamonds were the same, and nature would not conduct such a cruel game of creating the same and giving it a different name.

But i chose one nonetheless, a pretty gold band with an oval diamond. I think it was oval at least, it was the band that i really liked.

When i went home that day, i sat on my porch and picked up a rock and wondered if it was a diamond too, one not yet just formed.

Then i threw it away because it was just a rock.

Then I went back to watching Dora the explorer and forgot about diamonds and rocks.

Till the day of the wedding, when my grandmother commented that my aunt was shining brighter than the diamond on her finger and all the ladies chuckled.

I didn't laugh, instead i wondered.

Wondered if my aunt was really a diamond too.

'Polished' was what my mom called her.

'Well rounded'.

She had a government job and was smart and pretty, more so than my uncle and i wondered how she got roped into this arranged marriage thing.

She was a diamond being tethered to a ring.

I like to throw rocks into the pond near my house sometimes.

I like to watch it skip the water a few times, leaving ripples before the surface pulls it under.

And i wonder if i didn't touch the rock, didn't misplace it, would it become a diamond?

Perhaps it would now become a pearl instead, at the bottom of the lake.

And it would look like all the other pearls just like a diamond looked like all diamonds.

'Polished'

'Well rounded'

Sometimes i feel like a diamond too, one still rough and jagged.

And i feel this intangible force trying to polish me, make me desirable.

But i guess i must be the exception for i have evaded my cut down for so long.

I still hold all my jagged sharp pieces, ones my friends have lost.

And i think im a rock and id rather be one too because a diamond is expensive and rare and holds all these hopes.

But a rock is just a rock and nothing more.

And both are equally good for breaking windows.

Windows i like to sit at and daydream.

Sometimes i think about my aunt.

And even though she is happy, thoughts of my aunt still sometimes linger

And i wonder if she really is a diamond, or is just being weighed down by the one on her finger.