I took off my wedding ring last night
because the sudden onset June humidity had inflated my fingers
though admittedly
    I was troubled by its shiny presence the other night
    when my hand was in his.
Quite suddenly
I decided to leave it off.
Like so many aspects of my marriage
    it wasn’t ever mine.

When Grandma died, her engagement ring was deconstructed, its individual diamonds dispersed to daughter and granddaughters.
Much like we divided and negotiated every bit of nostalgic paraphernalia in the house,
from the old concert ticket stubs to the cross-stitched framed depiction of all of us grandchildren.  
But I kept her wedding band
    – there was no bickering there, I was the only one it would fit.  
And it fit like it was made for me.
I started wearing it
as a fragile connection to her
long before
I called myself anyone’s wife.

She had met you
and I assume approved of our pairing
but there is so much we didn’t ask, will never know.
So much of her that (maybe I imagined) I could see pulsing just under the surface
    – as she sat at the head of that impossibly dark wooden dining table watching the birds at     her feeder –
resides only there.  Stirred into her coffee, exhaled into unconsciousness with her cigarette smoke.
Whatever lessons she may have had to impart from her two marriages
remain in the silent loss.

Though maybe it’s circling back to me now.
After wearing it these past 18 years
I can no longer see this gold band as anything more or less
than an unfortunate symbol of surrender and subdued self-sacrifice.
Generational compromise.

Mom says I’m more my grandma’s daughter
    than she ever was.
As I’m unearthing my own enshrouded truths
I look for hers, too.