My Precious

Holding your cooling hand,
bedside, they said I had better

take your wedding ring
or it might get “disappeared”

its fading ghost now
a mere shadow on my finger.

So it hangs with mine –
twin markers round my neck –

chained together to show me
that time flows not in a line,

but in circles around scars
where pain won’t bend.

And when I feel the ground shift,
like a rip curl pulling me down,

around and around,
and can’t see the sky,

only taste salt water,
and can’t breathe,

bursting for air
but feeling nothing there,

I slip my finger in it,
my precious, cold & smooth,

and you appear –
your hand in mine,

your fingers in hold, to squeeze,
to ground me with warm gold.

Jennifer Cole’s poetic life started at the airport when she felt a real desire to write but was only able to do so by ushering herself and her three young girls into a bathroom stall and scribbling out a poem on a receipt. Now, she makes the time to write, whether prose or poetry, and finds inspiration in everyday actions, in everyday images, and in particular in the
writing itself. She has been published in The Broadkill Poetry Review, FLAR, Erbacce Press, The English Media Center, Mosiaque Press, Atlande Press, and Les Perséides.