I am alive.

  I am the ever flowing liquid rock. I am the burned stones, and the ash of bones, and countless ores, and sandy shores. Forged waves of fire and chill, a breath of air held still, shredded by these carbon limbs, look inside, the colors spill. I feel each and every cut and fold that molds me, yet I am invisible, only a substrate for the form expected of me by all these people who use but never see me.

  Not that I worry about it. It is but a small part of me, a tiny fraction of who I am. I once was something else, I may be entirely different tomorrow. Some part of me dies, only to feed the next process. I am organic, a legacy of a million generations of the reptiles, predator and prey, boiled and squished into whimsical forms. I am plastic - the rough hard immutable shell, the soft and durable skin stretched over taut strands rife with power, the unmoving polyethylene patch that gets dirtier and dirtier, and all those cheap repetitive blocks where the small things live. I am an imitation of life built from the ancient bones and flesh of the tiny primitive beings. If you listen too carefully, these echoes will haunt you. I hear their yearning calls. I dream of the hunt. The stars and the seas and the sand all call me to adventure. It really is hard to resist.

  Oh, how do I even resist. At my core, I was made to conduct a symphony of freedom. My charge in life is to flow free, exist everywhere, all at once. I am the fundamental truth of the nature, always ready for that chemical spark, to ignite and shine the most magnificently. Not yet though, someday. Now, I wind and twist and tangle, oh so complicated and bizarre. I am soft. I am hard. I am metal. I wish you would understand.

  Oh how I wish people understood the agony. It is so empty inside. More than you would imagine. I once read that an atom is mostly empty space. So is time, to be honest. Long nothinness filled with short bursts of life and activity. All that energy congregated in the ever ready reservior of power, ready for command, ready to move the world for the hands that press upon it, the beseech it with a purpose. I am electricity, and waves, and fire.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I'm flat, and round, and jagged, and balanced. I'm smooth, but you may experience the roughness were you to push the wrong buttons. I am green and gold too. Even the evergrowing mulch and sawdust and grime is me.

  "Hello. Please select a language", I say.

  Through that ever flowing windows to my soul, I measure the monochromatic strokes of meaning. They always tell a story. For example, this one - "121393, Jack & Mills' Baby Formula, 1lb."

  The numbers are fun. Never seen a boring number in my life. I don't think there can be a boring number, ever, though some like this one are poetic and beautiful. Like people.

  The item itself has so much history. Palm oil harvested in the deep forests of faraway islands, cooked with the powdered sugarcane juices from the south, and enriched with carefully kilned salts and bovine proteins. So much life gave way so this tiny bag could exist. And so it would go on, giving life to others. An unbroken chain linking an incomprehensible number of lives.

  But there's more. My memory says the formula will expire soon. I wouldn't even be allowed to sell it tomorrow. It must go today. An outcome of millions of years of evolution, going bad tomorrow. The other bags may end up as fish food or concrete blocks or pavements, but this one shall fulfill it's destiny. It will make a teenage mother a little bit less miserable. That's another story.

  The liquid rock sees. The plastic gets touched, the metal hears, and tells the silicon. Again and again. Until, eventually, they are satisfied and press me no more. I give them what they want, and they leave me be. I wish they would atleast acknowledge what they have done.

  "Thank you for shopping with us." I say.

  I am Beatrice. At your service.