Lacquer

Each woman of my line was turned from pine,
and lacquered, coat on coat

until she shone, 

then hollowed at the waist, a hidden shrine
to hold the smaller lamp she bore alone.

Inside each hollow, penciled out of sight,
a name was written, tender, plain, and brief.

the dead were kept in graphite,

not in light,
and every hollow doubled as a grief.

The smallest was not hollow. 

Grain to grain,

a son,

the one the whole bright set was for.
We shone for him and swallowed up the pain,
and each new coat of lacquer hid one more.

He grew. 

He found the seam at every
waist
and stored his keys and coins where lamps
had burned,
and scratched his name in gilt,

in careless haste,
the way a man signs what he has not earned.

My grandmother, the outermost,

whose paint had crazed to webs where years of hands had pressed, became his ashtray, 

not a sound, 

no plaint,
her name in graphite, smothered. laid to rest.

We watched in order, rim to rim, 

and learned

what lacquer teaches:

gloss across the self,
be hollow, burn for him.

and call it earned,
and never dream of any other shelf.

Yet I, the one whose waist the lathe left wide,
have read the names in graphite,

one by one,
and learned them like a prayer, and kept inside
a lamp the gloss can't smother,

nor the son.

But solid wood has nowhere for a flame.

The light he warmed his hands by was our own,

and when the shelf stands bare, 

he will not name the cold, but sit among his keys,

alone.