Will her words really bind them? The justice of the peace talks, turning pages with coral colored nails. Will vows wrap around their hearts and keep them together? Jerry's sister married Joe this weekend as I watched from behind my camera.

A single white rose in Joe's lapel splashed like a star against his dark suit. Colleen's gauzy white embroidery shimmered in a veil behind a cluster of deep purple and hot pink flowers. In every photo she is smiling except for the one conspiratorial talk I catch. She and Joe lean together, their voices too low to hear. I rely on the image alone and decide they were telling secrets. Married less than an hour and they are already sharing things meant for no one else. They have begun weaving an exclusive place in the world that only their words and gestured can enter.

March 29. Orion is losing his height in the sky and slipping away as spring comes. Scorpio is behind him. Orion flees as the myth unfurls. A scorpion battled and killed him. The gods tossed the memories into the sky.

J. gave me a clear, pale stone with many angles and crags. It's a special stone, he said. I have kept it, but it was asking for you, he told me. Someone special gave it to me to keep, but you should take it now. Keep it, and when you are ready, pass it to someone else who needs it or deserves it.

So I have the stone and each time my fingers bump against it in its tiny, quiet hiding place, I remember J. as he leaned toward me with his hands gently wrapped around something. He was still and his face relaxed. I have something for you, he had said. I understand his expression now. It was relief and sadness.

Into my hands he placed the stone he must have used to soak up his emotion for someone in his past. Someone I won't ever know. Somehow ascribed to the pale stone is strength that grows from the weight of an ordinary thing to something growing heavier with secrets, longing, emotion, and a final confession. Inflated with so much the stone was too heavy, then unbearable, like a soul. Treasure it, love it, believe in it, and give it away.

Orion was too boastful and other gods turned to stare. Goddess Artemis and mother Leto heard his secret: he would banish all wild animals from earth. Wrung from the gossamer stuff of heavens and myth, they would send a Scorpion to defeat him. The Scorpion either killed him, or he escaped, and the god Zeus either raised the deadly creature to a place in the night sky, or saw that Orion had started to swim away. He should not escape. Calling for Artemis, Zeus pointed across the water to a speck on the horizon. She was terrific with an arrow. Zeus asked, can you hit that?

Later retrieving her kill she found Orion with her arrow in his head. Her gifts became too heavy to carry. Her heart was a stone. Orion was a better shot, but given the chance, he would say that the better aim was always hers.

She begged for Zeus to restore Orion, but love was not enough. She had to give Orion away. By herself she threw him against the stars to hold his place all winter long.

If Lily is not an obedient girl by the time my buddleia blooms, please send in the scorpions.

All the myth makes me think of tattoos -- astronomy and the zodiac spilling in a milky way across my skin.