sjávargler

I was there again, í fjörunni, picking up rounded pieces of glass and stuffing them deep into my pockets. Green, teal, blue, pink, amber, all frosted and looking too much like gumdrops to set safely in a bowl on the table. Someone might break a tooth.

Instead they are in a straight-sided glass, covered in water and placed in the window where they can catch the light and shine more like they did where I found them, light að sunnan skimming the water and catching them broadside, making them flare like gems against the black pebbles. But this water is fresh. They do not smell of salt here, not any more than everything else does, of sweat, after a too-warm day.

There are other salty waters, it occurs to me. Amber washed up on northern beaches was called, in poetry, Freyja's tears. She had wept for her husband Óðr, who had gone away and never returned. Judging by the rest of the mythology, she got over it, but the world got amber for her heartbreak.

These pseudo-gems are not so precious as amber. They are, in fact, the smooth-polished garbage of a hard-drinking people, the thick bases of bottles scoured into lemon-drop shapes by basalt and waves. But then amber is mere tree sap. There should be some lofty story for these colored stones too, I think, some tragedy or some deed.