Jade

My aunt used to wear a jade bracelet—she wears one still—right or left wrist, I no longer remember; my memory has no sense of direction these days. To my childish eyes, It looked like liquid light turned molten in fire so I didn’t think that it could break, but that day in the kitchen I tried it on, it slipped smooth off my wrist and cracked clean in half on the terrazzo floor. Out of the two shining halves fell a shining child with dimples sinking so deep into his face that water welled in them, and honey; a serious child with long enough arms to reach around herself…I let her borrow my face but I’m now terrified that she hides behind it too well; an amethyst ring, a ruby ring missing its stone, a gold tooth, three laughing sisters, two more sitting at the table to share in the joke, a bottle of schnapps and a shot glass for Dada, ten perfect nail beds curved like the part of the road we cannot yet see, like the bend where I wait for a bus or a train, a pair of wings maybe, like the molten jade light fusing back to itself in a pair of feverish palms slick with sweat and an eagerness to be [re]made whole.