philosopher's stone

i used to be (& still am) an alchemist.
a child by the creek. i would carry
beer bottles & rusted nails down
to the stone. it was nothing like
the old sorcerers thought it would look.
covered with graffiti & river muck. 
i turned them into gold. sold them 
for quarters. the gumball machine
by the cvs knew my name. sent me enough
planets to survive a summer. sugar 
on my tongue. between teeth. occasionally
i would transmute more wildly. 
i once brought my father's knife & watched
as it changed. a golden blade. i used it
to carve my name into the shoulders 
of a beech tree. it was cruel & ugly of me.
i have returned years later to find 
my old name twisted & healed by time.
my favorite creation was on a night
in november. i was considering 
if it would be too hard to run away & live
in the woods by the creek. i had seen
a man there before. he lived in a scheme
of blue tarps & bungee cords. 
i visited the stone. imagined lying my whole body
against the surface & watching as my skin
make a statue of me. i have tried to find
the stone again but it is not there. 
i don't know what stopped me. 
instead, i lifted a dead bird to the surface.
it did not turn into gold. instead, it burst
into a dozen dragonflies. i realized i was
the wrong kind of alchemist. too worried
about gold to remember that change
is often the art of survival. i never touched
the stone but if i did i think i would
have become a holy swarm. 
bees or maybe just fat pond flies. hungry
in all the ways i never let myself as a girl
without a gender. it took me years to do the same. 
every time i see a dragonfly i wonder if 
it is an offspring of that rupture. 
the stone is somewhere else now. i hope
it makes someone shine gold at dusk. 
i like to imagine the man by the creek had it.
that he made golden leaves & built 
a dazzling tree before leaving. 
maybe elsewhere, maybe gone.