In the spring, I laid out the beads for a necklace,

a semi-circle of blue ceramic and bone.

It needed a pendant, perhaps, a carved animal shape?

I searched, but found nothing fitting. In the summer,

my mother-in-law went on hospice. In the fall, weeks after the funeral,

my sister-and-law and I reverently combed through her jewelry and

we found a bone pendant carved in the shape of a horse.

She had once loved horses; in those photos her young face still

innocent, open, and willing, in the sunshine.

The day after, my own mother happened to send a video

to our family text chat of a choppy, nostalgic projector showing

her as a small child on her pony, brimming with joy and it

wrecked me, I wept with motherline grief.

I had never seen her like that. Happy.

And so I lit a candle while I strung the necklace with the horse pendant,

and I wear it for the the lost and broken joys of the mother–

I wear it for joy,

I wear it for joy.