by Jessica Barksdale
I’m still thinking about my sister’s
earring, the one I lost on the gay bar
dance floor, back when a gay
bar in the suburbs was subversive,
slightly dangerous, my two friends
and I there to support our student,
who was gyrating on a box as we scrabbled
on the floor looking for the golden
leaf, fake, of course, but half of the pair
I kept when my sister died. The pressure
of the jewelry against my skin allowed
me to remember her in the hours and days
almost year since she died. But that night, first
I bumped and grooved and sweated to the music,
tossing back my head, throwing up my arms,
singing and crying and hoping and smiling,
and then back at the table, I lifted my hand
to touch my ear, to touch her, to remember her
in those last minutes, she in the bed, she not breathing,
and the earring was gone, my ear lighter, my body
free but sad, and then we searched and came up
with nothing but dust, a small purse, a sock. Now,
twenty-nine years later, I’m still on that floor, eyes
wide, looking. I’m still in the room with my sister,
waiting, I’m still here, sitting, mourning everything.
About the author:
Jessica Barksdale is the author of the poetry collection Grim Honey and the novel The Play’s the Thing, both published in 2021. Her novel What the Moon Did is forthcoming February 2023. Recently retired, she taught composition, literature, and creative writing at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California for thirty-two years and continues to teach novel writing online for UCLA Extension and in the online MFA program for Southern New Hampshire University. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband.
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