I call to see if you’d like my mother’s diamonds. The studs she wore every day for thirty years, the ones I removed from her ears the same day I tilted her head back above the hospice sink, lathered her scalp with almond-scented suds. These are the posts that pierced her milky skin. This is the carbon, transformed by time and pressure and the fire of earth, that rested on top, and sparkled. Diamonds never were for me. You send me straight to voicemail. I remove the brass hoops from my lobes. Slip the studs’ precious metal through my skin.
Elizabeth Grey is a writer, fly fisher, and lover of the sea. She lives where the wind directs her. Instagram: @helloelizabethgrey