I found a necklace my mother wore when I was a girl,
small summer fruits hanging from a green glass chain
I fastened the clasp, the past was a pearl,
the years an oyster, secreting pain.
My son touched the cherries, the radiant pear,
he wanted to try it on.
Then I had needed what she wouldn’t share,
the scent of her lingering, bittersweet, strong.
She coiled it in a purse of crimson satin
embroidered with dragons, and soft like a heart.
As arcane as the womanly pattern
I looked for in her, an implacable art.
Owning her treasure, I lifted my child
my future a garden, tentative, wild.
13.5
