Not Even a Wrist of Flesh and Bone

The girl got him a bracelet
for his right arm, already holding 
twelve bangles of silver and of gold.  

He never wore it, said, instead,
each circle had to come to him 
by chance:

the Middle Eastern deli counter man
who’d given him the middle one,
the New York psychic—grabbed his arm

and told him to beware.
They couldn’t just be gifts, what with
their implications of enclosure, continuation.

And so, the brass loop was stashed in his backpack,
the same one he would drop first on her floor.
 She never saw what else might be inside

but wondered if, like the circle, 
known by many as a magical space,
it held nothing in its center 
but air.

Bryn Gribben is a poet and essayist who left academia to write and explore antiques. Her essay “Cabin” was nominated for a 2019 Pushcart Prize, and she was a finalist both for the 2021 Creative Nonfiction Porch Prize and the Peseroff Prize in poetry. Bryn’s first book, a musical memoir, Amplified Heart: An Emotional Discography, was published by Otherwords Press in 2022. She lives in Seattle with two cats and a love song of a husband.