I was a statue buried in a wishing fountain. As the days went by, the masses would stop to adore me. To wish upon my fountain. Unable to move, I wished to be among the coin tossers. To live out an undetermined fate. I watched crowds live and die, hope and wish. I held onto their wishes with nothing but their own delusions. Those delusions I did not mind amusing. Hearing roosters every morning and having not a single light at night, I wished to move. Doomed to granting wishes without one for myself, I wished to no one. Even so I wished, hoping the stars would fall down to listen and amuse me.
At times like these, I remember an old lady who's name I never learned. She frequently visited with empty pockets. She didn't believe in wishes. This old woman was a baker and carried the scent of fresh bread everywhere. She would sit along the fountain side looking in, telling me stories of all kinds. She would confide in me her worries and happy thoughts. Any she could conjure up from the depths of her deepest regrets. She had fought a lot with her husband before he died, her children don't visit anymore, and she can barely make ends meet. She once said I was lucky to be without a burden. She taught me about life, the cruelty and the beauty. For all the happiness we express, we must also feel sadness, she had told me. Even so, I craved life. I craved to know. I craved to be crushed by life's burden. In my little fountain the world seemed so small. I wished it wouldn't seem that way.
I remember a boy from a long time ago, before I had sprouted consciousness of any kind. He would come along every day around noon with a coin in hand. He would look at me as if I wasn't stone and he wasn't vibrant with color in his cheekbones. Maybe it was pity he looked at me with. He would hold up the coin and throw it into my fountain. A wish for me. If I had a mouth, I would have asked him if he was my savior. Throughout his living years I had plenty of wishes. Enough to spare, but even with enough to spare, at some point my wishes became delusions. Yet I knew they always had been. With enough to spare, the stars never fell. Drowning in wishes, the people soon decided a new statue was due.
My tears soon replaced the water in my fountain. I cried rivers day and night, I cried for the stories I would never live out, for the delusions I so gladly held onto. Overflowing, I drank my sorrows to keep wishes from drowning. By the end of the week, I was removed. My delusion was granted more bitter than sweet.
The stars fell that night to laugh at me.
