by Kelly Sargent
You kept a rusty, Bugs Bunny tin of marbles in our bedroom
on the shelf you thought I couldn’t reach
because you dreamt they might be worth something,
Someday.
I found one under your bed this morning when I was clearing out Mom’s house
and your side of the room exactly as you had left it.
A cerulean blue glassy cat’s eye stared at me
lifelessly
from the dark corner of the rectangular outline —
darker than the rest of the Brazilian cherry wood floor —
that the sun had never touched.
I reached for it.
Cool — almost chilled — it was, by the absence of life-giving rays.
Smooth it was, in its betraying lack of indentations.
It was weightier than I had expected.
My fingertips caressed it, gently at first;
then, with increasing pressure, earnestly hoping to infuse it with life.
I wanted it to see me,
and be happy to be found.
But it didn’t know that it had been lost,
and could not find joy in the moment.
Like you.
With the blue, glassy stare you gave me when I found you
in your bed
when you were 16.
You didn’t know that one to match lay on the wooden floor beneath you.
I recalled the time that I spilled your collection,
and how the clatter roused you from a lazy Sunday nap.
I froze in place and shivered, anticipating your ire.
You considered me with cerulean compassion,
a golden lock matted against your forehead.
And you laughed silver strands of grace at me.
I never knew the last time I laughed with you
would be the last time I laughed with you,
until it was.
I nestled the marble in my palm
and put it in my pocket.
It was worth something.
Born hard of hearing and adopted in Luxembourg, Kelly Sargent grew up with a deaf twin sister in Europe and the United States. She wrote for a national newspaper for the Deaf, and is also a published artist. Believing that the Deaf and hard of hearing need to be heard as an overlooked subculture, she hopes to make her voice seen as a HOH poet.