An Offering

When a creature dies ... the flesh and soft parts of the body rot quickly. All that is left are the bones and teeth. (textbook entry on ‘fossils’) Sometimes. You, mother, dying, left what was hard first: bones weeping into your veins like flutes, teeth vanished on some hospital lunch tray. In your last mute days you parted with one more hard thing: the gold ring I was to save for my child. As your hand offered that bright circle (only seen as a whole now, when empty) did your thoughts reach, like mine, for your first wedding ring? You took that one off when I was seven or eight and sent it spinning from a car window. I can still feel the wet blades of grass slipping through my fingers, night dew coming on, you and father loud in the parked car. I searched there as if life spilled from a ring that lay somewhere out of sight but within reach, hid where only the crickets knew. I took the scraping of their mating calls for crying, as if they shared loss—my childish heart consoled by a soft ‘as if.’ The consolation carries on: their song (light as air, softer than voices) plays through my thoughts about that evening and fills the lost ring’s hollow with life’s most lasting part, cries for new love.