Bracelet By Ellyssa Pearce

Bound by a deeper meaning by hand

Colors chosen with a shallow intent

Flat against my skin as a reminder

Woven like a hundred hugs, a sisters bond

It’s a thank you and a promise I keep

A trust from her that I will hold it safe

The knots connect a great distance of need

Sadness is why she has made this gift

I had to leave her to self-discover

She is not like me in ways she wishes

But she has much that could not possess

Two sides of a coin, two different faces

I like to look at the color pattern

Her hands made it with determination

Everything has to be done with quickness

Diagonal thought process strikes the thread

Dyed with deep colors of a flower once bought

Together on an adventure once taken

Red, blue, yellow, green, and violet petals

Now strewn across a connection of me

The place of which I can hold her hand

So I can feel the protection she wants

And pass it on to her so she can see

She is not alone for she thought she was

She has tied us together in this way

With colors and the thought process woven

The knots lock a sense of a strong handshake

Like her fingers grabbing my wrist tight

And me letting her, pleading her, not to let go.
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My Shoes

BY CHARLES SIMIC

Shoes, secret face of my inner life:   

Two gaping toothless mouths,

Two partly decomposed animal skins   

Smelling of mice nests.

My brother and sister who died at birth   

Continuing their existence in you,

Guiding my life

Toward their incomprehensible innocence.

What use are books to me

When in you it is possible to read   

The Gospel of my life on earth

And still beyond, of things to come?

I want to proclaim the religion

I have devised for your perfect humility   

And the strange church I am building   

With you as the altar.

Ascetic and maternal, you endure:

Kin to oxen, to Saints, to condemned men,   

With your mute patience, forming

The only true likeness of myself.