Above our queen bed for twenty-two years;

a strand of pearls, a gift for an anniversary,

not that unlike rubies or diamonds yet

their fusion was both flat and brilliant.

To know they were true I held them against

my teeth like a blessed long ago stone rosary.

When readying to move from Vermont to California

I swaddled the pearls in a yesterday’s Times Argus.

I worried about the smudges I’d surely find later.

My own blackened hands told the same truth,

and thirty-two hundred miles is a long way to go.

Years later I still wonder which slightly damaged

liquor box I put the strand in. The same dark dream

haunts like a vampire, gnaws at the base of my throat.

The very place I wish her pearls now hung.

xo