String of Pearls

An act of war: a necklace, torn from a young girl’s throat—a gun grinds her 5th lumbar vertabra. This may be imagined from long-ago’s stiffened cabinet. Finding’s always a matter of strata, clues.  The pearls, released back into their individual selves, roll away, two lodging in a corner crack where they will be found many years later—counting will not help with the problem of time’s impenetrability—by another child trying to see what a mouse sees. What she sees, although she does not name this, is time. One pearl has been crushed beneath a foot. Pearls are made of frangible skin that can’t bear the itch, and the nacre of glow hides faults between the luster leaves. One of these pearls exists now here, in your mind’s eye, as orbed pearlescent thought or the heart’s crushed matter. As a story you may not wish to hear. As a sorrow that shines. You yourself hold this, and now there is another we. I am addressing you.