You kept a rusty Bugs Bunny tin of marbles in our bedroom
on the shelf you thought I couldn’t reach
because you dreamt they might be worth something
Someday.
I found one under your bed this morning
when I was clearing out Mom’s house
and your side of the room exactly as you had left it.
An abandoned, cerulean-blue
glassy cat’s eye stared at me
lifelessly
from the dark corner of the rectangular outline —
darker than the rest of the Brazilian cherry wood floor —
that the sun had never touched.
I reached for it.
Cool — almost chilled — it was, by the absence of life-giving rays.
Smooth, in its betraying lack of indentations.
It was weightier than I had expected.
My fingertips caressed it, gently at first;
then with increasing pressure, earnestly hoping to infuse it with life.
I wanted it to see me
and be happy to be found.
But it didn’t know that it had been lost
and could not find joy in the moment.
Like you.
With the cerulean, glassy stare you gave me when I found you
in your bed
when you were 16.
You didn’t know that one to match lay on the wooden floor beneath you.
I recalled the time that I spilled your collection
and how the clatter roused you from a lazy Sunday nap.
I froze in place and shivered, anticipating your ire.
You considered me with cerulean compassion,
a golden lock matted against your forehead.
And you laughed silver strands of grace at me.
I never knew the last time I laughed with you
would be the last time I laughed with you,
until it was.
I nestled the marble in my palm
and put it in my pocket.
It was worth something.
“The Keepsake” first appeared in The Purpled Nail
Kelly Sargent was born hard of hearing. Adopted in Luxembourg, she grew up with a deaf twin sister in Europe and the United States. Her most recent 2021 poems and artwork, including a current Best of the Net nominee, appeared, or are forthcoming, in nearly two dozen publications in the U.S. and abroad. She has also written for a national newspaper for the Deaf. Currently, she volunteers as a reviewer for an organization dedicated to making visible the artistic expression of sexual violence survivors.
Sparks of Calliope 