The Jeweler's Wife

by Catherynne M. Valente

Sitting to breakfast in a white kitchen,
plum tea and basil so green on my toast
that I must squint in the sight of it,
I am wearing a necklace of coral
dredged from the African seafloor.
It is orange as a string of suns around my throat:
you brought it for me from places
where the desert is full of the saline sea.
I have forgotten why I still wear it,
now that you are gone. I want to pull up
the tiles beneath the yellow oak table
and bury beneath it,
everything you ever brought me
from places impossibly gold.
Be happy, you said.
I will bring you jewels from India,
bluer than Kali's breast,
I will pluck you rubies from a glass of cold vodka
in Vladivostok.
Jade there will be from Thailand,
that ringed an elephant's ankle.
I will drown you in jade, I swear it.
And Arabian gold from the feet of a djinn
who promised me no children,
and an empty hearth.
Stay here, be happy,
I will cover you up in jewels
from places you will never go.
When I am done all those djinn-sworn children we never had
will flock to the mountain of gems that used to be a wife,
and say:
such hair I hear she had!
And eyes that never wept!
I have sat at this table,
at this tea, at this toast,
for years, and set a bitter thing
into the silver prongs that were meant
to hold some cold foreign diamond.
I have folded hands over my stomach,
felt a djinn dancing there,
in the wide, empty spaces,
bloody alleys and bone-hunched porticos.
It was summer when I ate the table.
I put my teeth to its edge,
to the basil that forced me to spectacles,
the tea and the cup and the saucer,
my jaw splintered it all, hard as pearls,
and I howled as I did it,
as I chewed through our barren house
like an emerald-eyed Egyptian crocodile:
the sofa we bought right out of college,
the clock on the mantle, a gift from your mother,
the reading chair with chipped feet,
the stupid, sagging, dust-fucked bed --
I swallowed it all.
And after, hunched down in the corner of the bathroom
the tub falling crumbled from my lips --
the children came to see me there,
the thing that was a wife,
and her eyes that never wept.
It was morning -- so it cannot be a mistake.
You had been gone for a year. You had written,
saying that you had found me a brooch
in Singapore, a little ivory thing set in bronze.
It was morning, and it was summer,
and I crouched in the bathroom,
retching up the house.
The table flew free, and the sofa,
and the clock,
and the bed I cannot leave.
But my jewelry box would not come,
lodged in me big as a coffin,
I coughed up diamonds like watermelon seeds.
Be happy, stay here,
it is not for you to seek out these things,
but stand and hold out your hands
and I will venture the world
for your decoration.
Sitting to breakfast in a white kitchen,
of plum tea and bare toast,
I folded that morning in summer
my hands over that djinn-wracked belly,
and felt a faceted head press back,
sharp, glittering feet push at my kidneys,
little fists of sapphire and gold
opening and closing
while the tea steamed into nothing.

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