My Inheritance by Nadja Maril

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.