The Unseen Stones

I lounged in the cool shade of the concrete building, listening to the conversation of bluebirds mingling with soft rhythmic melodies and the noise of human interaction as the sighs of travel-weary tires murmured behind me. An early summer breeze gently tousled my hair and tiny white buds lazily threw themselves at my cup of tea.

I studied the building, attending not to the meticulous architectural details or the carefully crafted signage, but instead to the small black pebbles that dotted the surface of the cool gray blocks. They glistened in the sun, adding diversity to the otherwise boring surface. They were delicate, unique, strong.

At that moment I began to wonder about the pebbles imprisoned within the concrete blocks--the ones we don't see. Are they not also delicate and unique? Do they not add just as much to the structural integrity of the building? Yet, they remain the unseen--the ones who live without admiration, without care. Instead, they remain trapped within the walls of hardened dust, the eternally forgotten.

Perhaps that is why I have been called to Boston: to see those whom society has forgotten. Enclosed within their own concrete cages, they have the same beauty and value as those who have been held out for public admiration. Perhaps I have been sent as a social archeologist, charged with the task of unearthing the treasures within the stones.