Earrings

Funny how cruelty can be love:

my mother plucked abdomens off fireflies

to fashion earrings for us to wear at night.

We would play baseball in the backyard

with our ears blinking patterns of light.

I learned not to cry at their touch on my skin.

That summer, we saw the first photos

of Saturn’s rings: braided, icy spokes

supposedly prettier in person.

Saturn didn’t blink green like we did.

Our bodies glowed go go go

even when we wanted to stop

so we kept our hands in our mitts

and quit only when the flashes faded,

scared of what our mother might make next.

When the cicadas came, we imagined

their shells as toys on the shelf: finger puppets,

toe bands, fragile slinkys we never wanted to touch.