Wishing to be remembered, I remember

the jewelry I wear

my father’s signet ring

In a dream my father comes to me, unspooling golden thread. Sit, he says, for a concert is to begin, and I say, Dad? And the dream

turns, and my mother steps in: young, vibrant, alive after

all.

Sleep comes when it might. Dreams arrive with their own moon. My parents are not inclined, even now, to answer the question I might ask of them, the wish-wonder of my older age.

Did you

really

love me?

Not long ago, I found my father’s high school ring in a box stuffed with cotton and rattling with my son’s first teeth. I put it on. It has stayed where it fits. So that now I wear my father’s signet H; the last thing—a platinum platter of diamond dust on a platinum chain—he ever gave to me; my grandmother’s pounded-into-thinness ring (lost for decades, found by accident); my marriage band (my husband’s surprise; we’d been married fifteen years); a ring made in remembrance of my mother’s brother; and,

clasped-in only recently

(following a conversation with a friend),

the necklace my mother chose for me.

Wishing to be remembered, I remember.

Metal, stones, and dreams.

*

My hybrid novel Tomorrow Will Bring Sunday’s News: A Philadelphia Story is available where books are sold.

I am indebted to the Auraist for this interview regarding the making (and hearing) of prose, my relationship to the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the idea of “style,” among many other things.

I have written numerous books on the art of writing and of living a literary life. Last week, Bill and I launched two illustrated blank journals. All can be found here.