Material Girls

 

 

Each Christmas, much like Morecombe and Wise,

your father must top the previous year’s offering:

citrine pendent, emerald ring , white gold watch…….

When he died,  mother began to buy her own gifts,

parading down the high street jewelled as a starling.

Forced eventually at bill point to mug herself,

she snatched the Ceylonese bracelet from her wrist to settle a gas bill,

tore the gold collar from her neck to pay the electricity,

ripped diamond rings from her fingers to keep a car on the road,

afterwards painfully probing the tender cavities of her jewellery drawer.

Unable to be buried with her left over trinkets,

you were instructed  to hammer them to scrap. 

Twenty years on , you buy designer handbags

whose possession quickens your body like a lover,

dreading the day when you must snatch them from your grasp

to be hawked on EBay