Inheritance

She sat at the table, the light on her hair,

trying to open a candy she’d found in the chair.

Her knuckles were swollen, the joints gone wide,

with the blue of the veins showing clearly inside.

Her wedding ring rattled, a gold, hollow clink,

loose on the finger, starting to sink.

She gripped the plastic and gave it a tear,

with a sharp, sudden grit and a ghost of a sneer.

I looked at my palms as I stood at the sink,

and felt a cold shift, a new kind of link.

I have the same grip and the same heavy bone,

a map of a future I’ve already known.