Unakite

Unakite was granite once. Hot water worked into it over a long stretch and took part of it apart from the inside.

It did not turn to rubble. The pink feldspar held, and green epidote grew in the gaps where the old rock gave way.

Aries, you are quick to rebuild and you will not look at the wreck first.

Something came apart and you had a new plan by the Tuesday. Everybody admired that. Nobody asked what you did with the actual feeling.

Somebody taught you that grieving out loud was self indulgent. So you turned it into activity, and activity has never once finished the job.

Sit down for one hour with nothing to fix.

Hold it under a lamp and tilt it. The pink patches flash where the feldspar splits flat, and you can see every separate grain in it.

That grain is the giveaway. It is a rock rather than a gem, and it is cheap because there is a great deal of it about.

Taurus, cheap has never meant worthless to you, and you learned that the expensive way round.

Somebody with money made you feel like a guest in a room you had paid for. You still remember what you were wearing that night.

Now you can price anything on sight, and you quietly distrust everybody who cannot.

The thing in your hand cost four pounds.

It is still older than anything else that was in that shop.

What this actually is, is granite that partly failed. Pink feldspar and green epidote, with quartz between them, all visible as separate grains if you look.

No dye, no heat, nobody involved at any point. It is one of the plainest honest things you can own.

Gemini, you make everything into a better story than the one you actually lived.

The real version had you crying in a car park. It does not have a punchline in it, so you found the funny angle and told that one instead, at three different tables.

By the fourth telling you could not feel the thing at all, which was always the point of it.

Tell one person the car park version.

This one is tough. Six to seven on the scale, water is fine, and a soft brush is the whole care routine.

It survives handling in a way its own history would not suggest. The rock it came from was taken apart from the inside and it still holds together.

Cancer, you have had a year like that and you are still filing it as a failure.

Something came in and dismantled the arrangement you had built. You kept going, and nobody clapped, and you have never counted it as anything.

Somebody once told you that you were coping well. You have been performing coping well ever since, including on the days you were not.

You were not put back. You were made again.

Somebody tumbled this by the bucketload. Unakite goes into a barrel with grit for weeks, comes out smooth, and sells three for a pound.

Nothing else was ever done to it. No dye, no oven, no invented story. It is worth exactly what it is, and it says so.

Leo, you have never been able to be small in public without feeling like a failure.

Somebody made a fuss of you as a child only when you were doing well. So a flat year feels like being quietly taken off the shelf.

You are performing fine at the moment for about four people who would genuinely rather have the truth from you.

Tell one of them this week.

Hot water got into a granite and rearranged it. Parts of the old rock broke down, and green epidote grew into the spaces they left behind.

The pink stayed. That is the part people miss. Some of this stone is original and some of it arrived afterwards.

Virgo, you keep trying to restore the version of your life that existed before.

There was a year that changed the arrangement, and you have treated every day since as a repair job with a deadline attached to it.

Somebody praised you for bouncing back quickly, and you took that as the standard. It was only ever meant as a kindness.

Nothing is going back. Something is growing in the gaps.

Look closely and it is mottled, not patterned. Salmon pink and pistachio green in patches, with no design and no symmetry anywhere in it.

That is because nothing arranged it. The green grew wherever the old rock gave way, and the pink stayed wherever it did not.

Libra, you have spent your life making things look composed from the outside.

The flat you keep tidy, and the face you keep level. Somebody in your family treated a mess as a moral failing. You took the whole rule on board.

So the hardest year of your life got summarised as a busy patch, and nobody offered to help, because you gave them nothing to help with.

You are allowed to look like this stone.

Strip the name away and this is a damaged rock. Granite that hot water got into and partly dissolved, with something new grown into the holes.

There is no treatment on it and nothing to disclose. The damage is the entire reason it is worth looking at.

Scorpio, you have never been able to hide the fact that something happened to you.

Other people came out of the same kind of year looking untouched. You came out visible, and you have quietly held that against yourself since.

Somebody once called you dramatic for still being affected months later. You have kept your recovery private ever since.

The mottling is not a flaw in the stone.

It takes water, sun and a pocket without complaining. Hard enough to scratch glass and dull enough that nobody would bother stealing it.

The interesting part is that it already survived the worst thing that happens to a rock. Its own structure came apart and it carried on being solid.

Sagittarius, you keep moving because standing still is where the year catches up with you.

There was a loss you never actually stopped for. There was a flight, or a job, or a genuinely very good reason, and there always is one.

Somebody in your family treated leaving as the healthy option, and you took that in whole and never once questioned it.

Nothing at the next place is holding this for you.

The granite came first and the hot water came much later, working through it slowly and taking pieces of it apart.

The rock did not collapse. Green epidote filled in as the old structure gave way, and the whole thing held its shape.

Capricorn, you rebuilt everything on your own and you have never once mentioned it.

For a stretch of years you were the only load-bearing part of somebody else's life. You filed that as just what you do.

Nobody ever sat you down afterwards and asked how it had been. You would have said fine, and they never asked, and both of those things are true at once.

Somebody should have asked.

Get it under a light and you can pick out the separate crystals. Pink feldspar and green epidote, with grey quartz between, each grain a different mineral.

It is a mixture and it is honest about that. Nothing was blended, nothing was hidden, and no two pieces match.

Aquarius, you can describe your own history like a case study and feel nothing while you do it.

The facts are all correct. You can give somebody the year, the people and the sequence of events without any of it touching you.

Somebody made feelings unwelcome in that house, so you learned to file yours as information. It has worked for twenty years.

Which part of it still hurts?

Somebody put this in a barrel with grit and rolled it for three weeks to get that surface. It is the only thing anybody has ever done to it.

Under the polish it is still a rock that came apart and grew back mixed. You can see every grain if you tilt it to a lamp.

Pisces, you are still holding a grief that everybody else considers finished.

There was a date after which people stopped asking, and you noticed the exact week. You started saying you were doing better, because the truth had begun to inconvenience people.

It is not late. Grief keeps no schedule, whatever the person who checked on you in month three seemed to think.

Some of you grew in afterwards. That counts.