Oyster
Two years ago today you left this Earth.
On that day, I half expected you to pile us all into the back seat of the car to come with you, telling us all to behave. Into the dark green Oldsmobile. The one Big Daddy gave you. The one that had only one working door.
There isn’t a single day that passes without memories of you coursing through my veins, plumping up the heart that sits idly inside my chest, still pumping all on its own, half-wondering why it should bother, but doing it nonetheless.
My heart (and every part of me) was formed deep within you. You made it all. You made US all. You- the oyster, forming her pearls. One by one.
I am pearl number three.
You built me up, layer by layer, around a single grain of sand.
And the pearls you made before me — Anne, and Donald (Bubba) — and the pearl you crafted after me — Little Veronica. We were once all pressed together, gathered around you.
But we’ve fallen now. Two years ago today the thread we’d hung from snapped, no longer strong enough to hold us in place.
Crashing down, down… down to the hardwood floor below, falling, falling… the thread slipping through our empty centers.
We survived the impact by rolling across the floor.
We were still alive, but now we were scattered; lost to one another.
I miss my sisters and my brother and the beautiful oyster we all came from, who was sitting in the sand long before we existed — safe in her womb of saltwater and seaweed and moonlight. And the salt water that made us all is rolling down my cheek.
