Kinsman's Box

Packing for university,
My mother and I upturned
my jewellery box -
the accumulated trinkets of
a small lifetime.

Plastic crap, mostly -
fleeting fancies of a child.
Occasionally, we would
strike upon a true treasure
in the tangled heap.

Her at one end,
I at the other,
We unspun year on year
of interlocking chain, thread,
cord, lead, band and bangle:
The dull and the shining,
The twisted and broken
yielding, unwinding until
the mess, subsiding, separated
and became two piles:

One to go -
some in the bin with the rubbish,
Some for my sister, whom we
trusted would enjoy it more
than I with my grown-up sensibilities.

The other also to go,
Put back in the box, parole denies,
Until such time as suits me.
Good jewellery for show only -
bar exceptions
for solely my eyes.