I’m drawn again to my mother’s jewellery.
Not those she’s owned – oversized earrings of the eighties,
hand-crafted bracelets from Asian markets
or the chunky silverwork she made in the seventies –

but the ring she had modified for my twenty-first:
a silver cage added to her wedding band
holding a blood-red garnet from Kashmir
during travels before my time.

I’ve been wearing the earrings
gifted at another significant date
one lost, confessed, replaced
they whistle gently, spinning as I walk.

There were garnets again at graduation
two small studs and a matching one
threaded on a thin silver chain,
delicately linking the past to my newly laid path.

The recycled glass pendant we bought together
a memento of a strenuous tramping trip.
Mine concentric rings of wine bottle necks
while hers is more elegantly crafted.

I thought the carelessly dropped list last Christmas:
Saradha, necklace would have spoilt the surprise
but I didn’t know how the string of cut glass would
send prisms of blue and amber around every room I’m in.

And now this cupid cameo in old fashioned green.
She’d watched my reaction carefully to help her choose
when we shopped together, our gentle patter like precious stones
or the sound a timpani might make if you only knew it by name.

© Saradha Koirala 2011