Telos

All the selves you might become, and all the selves the chisel will kill, sleep in your veins. The first strike is loss: shards fall, and what you were falls with them. Yet in the pale wound, a line appears that no will of yours could have drawn. The line deepens. Finds edge. Finds shoulder. Finds face. The chisel strikes again and again, until the stone stands where you stood. The chisel falls from your hand. The stone looks back.