To His Nephew

In my bureau is a matchbox. I am not going to make this easy for you. In the box there are two cloves, a snip of lavender, and a piece of ribbon. Inside the ribbon, a girl walks tiptoe with outstretched arms past the living room. She is my grandmother. In her pocket, a cinnamon quill and kitchen shears; in the bend of her arm, kith and kin: her grandfather carefully opens a butterfly case in which the inner ears of mammals are pinned. From the skein of bones like shell he hears something like metal and bird in a hallway. I am telling you because you want to be told. It's the clinking (do you hear) of a pocket case, minor operating instruments in an old man's hand. He runs toward his wife who braces herself on the spiral baluster. Around her neck they say she wore a bite of arsenic, but I know inside the pendant her mother sleeps beside my eldest sister. Tonight, you will sleep in your room because you are tired and because you do not believe me.

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