For my fiftieth birthday, I asked my mother
for her gold
and ebony hoop earrings,
but she’d forgotten where she’d hidden them.
Instead, she gave me a chipped paperweight,
rusty pen knife, and tin locket wrapped in ribbon.
I sucked on the ice in my tea to sooth my bitter tongue,
and thanked her.
It was after her cataract surgery, so I couldn’t pretend
her vision was clouded.
Besides, she told me, she was sharp as a tack.
“I have all my buttons,” she’d say each time I’d visit.
I liked the image of the pointed tack better,
stabbing at my heart.
Always my rival, she warned, “Old age is not for sissies.”
After she died, I searched her house for those earrings,
convinced they must be waiting for me at the bottom of a vase
or cleverly placed with a note in the pocket of a sweater.
But I never found them.
The paperweight keeps me grounded.
I use the pen knife as a letter opener to protect
my arthritic thumbs.
Stored inside the locket are the promises to myself.
The earrings were always her earrings, dangling from her ears.
My gift, self-reliance.
Nadja Maril’s chapbook of poems and short essays, RECIPES FROM MY GARDEN, will be released September 2024 by Old Scratch Press and is currently available for preorder.