Jaded

Placing my hand
in her flower-print
lap, my pawpaw
encircled a cloud-
green bangle like
dragon's breath
delicately exhaled
around my tiny wrist,
and with the sharp
click of the gold
clasp she froze it
in serpentine shape.
Never take it off
my pawpaw warned,
her fingers still clasping
mine, as I exclaimed
at its hard coolness,
the green shallows
in the stone under
lamplight, its leafy
depths in shadow.
She told me this story:
there was a boy
once who tried to peep
into his mother's pot;
he overturned a watery
fall of soup and dumplings,
hastened for a towel and
slipped, started his back-
wards tumble to the ground,
I can see it in slow motion
as she speaks--ah-yah!
Arms flailing, his head
is saved, his last breath
simply rolled on instead
to his next, it was his jade
necklace that braced
his meeting with ground,
breaking his trajectory
into another story, one
more tragic than this.
Never take it off,
pawpaw warned,
jade protects you
and you might just
live forever.

Well if I could believe you
now, I would pile jade all
over and around you,
green glowing arms,
nape, ears, ankles, until
you grew into a tree
of jade, and you could
root in our garden, shade
my years of rain and sun,
my children linking
arms around you, together
watch the moon wane
in my wrinkling days,
and see, in this way,
my faith might just
save you.