Lucy Alexander #85 Beads

My mother’s beads were kept caged.

Darkness bled them of their colour

until they were the same pale as my fingernails

she rolled her own sweat into crystals

and hardened them to drops with her will

until they shone iridescent, collapsing

only after you looked for them too long

and even then, they diamonded light

sprung back into multiples.

With tears she was always turning away;

her own she put in perfume bottles she kept

on the glass shelf, and would press them

to her pulse points when pretending to leave.

With mine, she spent them all,

we wasted them on small doings

they watered the garden and dried up

in her shadow where we buried the blood

in the soil, there where the loam is so rich.