Lunch box

My mama leaves rocks shocking bright
in my lunch box, and when I was little
I lined them up one by one by
one in my desk’s lip and learned them:
amethyst was a language class, means royal,
and citrine is yellow from “lemon” in French;
spinel imitates rubies like Benedict Arnold;
morganite was named for the robber baron
Granpa’s brother met; opals look like rainbows
and jasper is a little countryside locked
in rock and that’s geography;
Noah steered by garnets at night,
and the Aztecs worshipped emeralds.
After school, I’d trade
my knowledge for fairytale stories,
dark stones for Papa, bright for her,
words like dog! cat! book! soap!
for the time my girl-Mama swallowed a gem
thinking it was ice. But by now I know
how Christ’s blood fell on jasper
at the cross’s foot, how it turned
it to a crucifix of bloodstone. How
your papa was a geologist like I wanted to be,
that means he knew beauty takes years
to grow and how few of his gems
Mama’s got left. How someone’s eyes
always slice through my napkin to the stone. How
I’m the only one in the world who has lessons
at lunch, who trades to learn about her family,
who carries history so heavy you can’t even eat it.
Now even the words I tape to the fridge
martyr, mange, aggravate, cairn
are hard-edged and taut with weight,
and today’s stone is black with red flecks.
It’s bloodstone, but I’ve named it Rust,
because how does the ground make blood
if only God can, and I’m thinking
of Mama’s fingers worming the mud, cradling
the gem like a discoverer. I hold it
a minute’s worth of tight, let it knife my palm,
and then my fingers loosen, and I’m not holding,
and then it falls. And today’s day is muddy,
and today’s word is devour, and it’s gone.

Chalcey Wilding was born and raised in New York; currently she is the all-around intern for Portland's Poetry Northwest. This summer she is practicing patience by learning how to garden, bike, file alphabetically, drive, work leather, chop wood, revise poetry, and convince small children to share.